<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;The Next Starlink&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Amazon is quietly building the next Starlink,&rdquo; writes Paradigm editor Davis Wilson. &ldquo;And the best part? The market is completely missing it.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the kind of insight you only get when you&rsquo;re on the ground &mdash; while CES 2026 is still unfolding &mdash; not weeks later when the headlines have already moved on.
For several days now, Davis Wilson of sister e-letter The Million Mission has been navigating the chaos of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, deliberately looking past the spectacle to find ideas investors will still be talking about years from now.
Amazon, Davis reports, didn&rsquo;t bother with a traditional CES booth this year.
Instead, the company rented out a private conference room &mdash; a deliberate move that kept the real story off the showroom floor and away from casual passersby.
Inside were familiar Amazon products: updated Kindles, new Ring doorbells, even an AI wearable assistant.
And then, off to the side &mdash; almost hiding in plain sight &mdash; was the most important thing in the room.
Leo.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2DUdToP88z5ekZqpnIMevs/0573173e73e0baf96b111fcd4d50aa03/FMF-Issue-010926_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Photo courtesy: Davis Wilson
&ldquo;Leo is Amazon&rsquo;s low-Earth orbit satellite network,&rdquo; Davis explains, &ldquo;its answer to SpaceX&rsquo;s Starlink.&rdquo;
Rather than relying on cell towers or buried fiber, &ldquo;Leo beams broadband directly from space to homes, businesses, ships, aircraft and remote regions.&rdquo;
The implication is massive. Connectivity stops being a local utility and becomes a global subscription service.
What surprised Davis most wasn&rsquo;t the ambition &mdash; it was the progress.
<ul>
<li>Amazon already has 175 satellites in orbit</li>
<li>80 launches are scheduled for 2026, each capable of carrying 25&ndash;35 satellites</li>
<li>The end goal: a 3,000-satellite constellation.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Put that together and it&rsquo;s clear Amazon is approaching meaningful global coverage much sooner than most investors realize.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Yet Leo receives almost no attention,&rdquo; Davis notes, even though &ldquo;the market already understands how valuable this type of business can be.
&ldquo;Just look at SpaceX.&rdquo;
Rockets may grab headlines, but analysts agree that Starlink is the profit engine &mdash; a recurring-revenue business with software-like margins once the infrastructure is in place.
It&rsquo;s why SpaceX is rumored to be considering an IPO as early as 2026, &ldquo;at a valuation as high as $1.5 trillion,&rdquo; Davis points out.
&ldquo;But when it comes to Amazon?&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Leo gets no such credit.
&ldquo;It is not meaningfully reflected in Amazon&rsquo;s valuation. It is barely discussed. Most investors don&rsquo;t even know it exists!&rdquo;
After seeing Leo up close at CES, Davis&rsquo; takeaway: &ldquo;Amazon is exactly the kind of stock I want to own long term &mdash; while the market looks the other way.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The OpenAI Scare
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As promised on Wednesday, we&rsquo;re back with four more of pro trader Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s 2026 insights, and he starts with a shift few investors are prepared for: After years of dominance, Enrique believes the &ldquo;Magnificent Seven&rdquo; are nearing an inflection point.
The group of tech stocks jumped about 75% in 2023, gained around 60% in 2024 and still posted returns above 20% in 2025. But last year was the first time the cracks showed &mdash; with about half of the group trailing the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s ~17% gain.
&ldquo;I think 2026 will be the first year in a long time these stocks underperform as a group,&rdquo; Enrique says. The pressure point, in his view, is the pace of AI spending.
&ldquo;At some point in 2026, I think OpenAI will run into difficulties getting the financing for its trillion-dollar buildout.&rdquo; When that happens, he expects a sharp pullback across AI-related stocks.
But that doesn&rsquo;t mean the AI cycle is over. &ldquo;AI is much bigger than OpenAI,&rdquo; Enrique says. As spending slows, many large tech companies could see cash flow improve as capital expenditures level off.&nbsp;
By year-end, he expects the OpenAI-driven sell-off to keep Mag 7 from leading the market, despite several individual big tech names still setting up well.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On interest rates, Enrique argues the environment shifts in 2026. Inflation and long-term yields have been easing, and he expects the Federal Reserve to respond more forcefully.
&ldquo;We could see 100bp&ndash;150bps cuts in the next 18 months,&rdquo; driven by softer employment, political pressure and market instability tied to AI.
That backdrop points to a choppier market, he says, but not a lower one.
Enrique expects earnings growth and lower rates to push stocks higher by year-end 2026, even if the ride is rough. The midyear catalyst may resemble an &ldquo;OpenAI-pocalypse,&rdquo; replacing last year&rsquo;s tariff scare.
He closes with a call on crypto. After missing the mark in 2025 &mdash; &ldquo;It was the only 2025 stock market prediction that I got wrong,&rdquo; he says &mdash; Enrique still expects Bitcoin to reach $250,000 in 2026, driven by lower rates, rising liquidity and renewed risk appetite.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The U.S. labor market ended 2025 with a whimper. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employers added 50,000 jobs in December, falling short of expectations for 70,000. Even so, the unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, slightly better than the 4.5% economists forecasted.
The disconnect reflects what many economists now describe as a &ldquo;Great Freeze&rdquo; in the job market. Hiring has slowed markedly, but large-scale layoffs, the usual signal of a deeper downturn, have yet to appear.
Notably, December&rsquo;s job growth was well below the 150,000&ndash;200,000 jobs per month typically needed to keep pace with population growth, suggesting labor-market slack continues to build beneath the surface.
That slack shows most clearly in underemployment. Over the course of 2025, the number of Americans working part-time for economic reasons rose by nearly 1 million compared with 2024. By December, 5.3 million people were stuck working part-time, not by choice, but because hours were cut or full-time jobs weren&rsquo;t available.
Taken together, the December report points to a labor market that&rsquo;s still cooling &mdash; not yet freezing &mdash; heading into 2026.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Looking at futures this morning, all three major U.S. stock indexes are waking up on the right side of the bed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 0.40% to 25,800 while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 are both up around 0.30% to 49,645 and 6,985 respectively.
As for commodities, oil&rsquo;s up 0.85% to $58.23 for a barrel of West Texas crude. And precious metals are hitting the ground running. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.70% to $4,494.10 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 4.15% to $78.32.
The crypto market, on the other hand, is sinking into red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.55% to $90,220; Ethereum&rsquo;s down 0.60% to $3,075.
Of course, everything is subject to change if the Supreme Court tariff ruling comes out today. We promise follow-up coverage on Monday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Trump Targets &ldquo;Dark Landlords&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It began in the wreckage of the 2007&ndash;09 housing bust. Millions of foreclosed single-family homes landed on the federal government&rsquo;s balance sheet. In 2012, Washington quietly decided it didn&rsquo;t want to be a landlord.
Under a program known as REO-to-Rental, the government sold large bundles of foreclosed homes at steep discounts &mdash; but only to buyers who could deploy enormous amounts of capital at once.
If you were a hedge fund or private-equity shop willing to write a billion-dollar check, you were welcome. If you were a small investor hoping to buy the empty house down the block, you weren&rsquo;t.
The result was predictable. Firms like Blackstone amassed tens of thousands of homes, concentrated especially in fast-growing Sun Belt markets, and turned them into rental empires.
Once the easy money was made, many of those portfolios were spun into publicly traded REITs, including Invitation Homes (INVH). Wall Street had discovered a new asset class: single-family homes as yield instruments.
That model thrived in the years after 2020 when home prices surged and mortgage rates locked would-be buyers out of the market. But even then, cracks were visible.
As Paradigm&rsquo;s value investor Zach Scheidt noted last year, higher rates don&rsquo;t last forever. When rates fall, pent-up housing demand tends to reappear &mdash; and renters try to become owners. That dynamic threatens occupancy rates and pricing power for single-family rental giants.
Now the politics are catching up&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This week, President Donald Trump said he would move to ban large corporate investors from buying single-family homes, arguing that homeownership has drifted out of reach for younger Americans.
&ldquo;People live in homes, not corporations,&rdquo; Trump said on social media, adding that he would 1) press Congress to put the proposal into law and 2) expand on it at Davos later this month.
The reaction was immediate. On Wednesday, shares of Blackstone fell more than 5%. Invitation Homes dropped roughly 6%. Builders FirstSource slid as well.
Skepticism followed just as quickly. Some economists caution that banning the biggest players may simply open the door to smaller and midsized investors, not first-time buyers.
Additionally, institutional investors own a very small share of all single-family homes nationally &mdash; about 0.5%, according to Blackstone&rsquo;s own figures.
But when looking only at the rental segment of single-family homes, institutional ownership rises to around 4%, per Urban Institute data.
Still, the symbolism matters. No sitting president has singled out large institutional buyers of single-family homes as a central policy problem
For years, these <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73MVMVB7mI">&ldquo;dark landlords&rdquo;</a> &mdash; as our managing editor Dave Gonigam calls them &mdash; have been an uncomfortable footnote to the housing crisis, tolerated and then normalized.
Trump&rsquo;s proposal signals that patience for this arrangement may finally be running out. Whether it changes prices? Debatable.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Fate of Venezuela&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> About 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold have been held at the Bank of England since the 1980s, part of the long-standing practice of storing national reserves in London, one of the world&rsquo;s major bullion hubs.
Since 2018, however, Venezuela has been blocked from reclaiming it &mdash; and the dispute over who controls the gold has only grown more complex.
The standoff started after Venezuela&rsquo;s contested 2018 presidential election. Western governments, including the U.K. and the U.S., refused to recognize Nicol&aacute;s Maduro as the country&rsquo;s legitimate leader.
When Caracas later requested the return of its gold, the Bank of England declined. Bloomberg reported at the time that U.S. officials had encouraged their U.K. counterparts to help cut Maduro off from overseas assets.
That stalemate sparked some creative &mdash; and risky &mdash; workarounds. In 2019, Venezuelan officials entertained a back-channel plan pitched by a U.K. national who said he represented a Swiss firm and could persuade English officials to release the gold for a discounted sale through European banks.
The plan collapsed when the intermediary disappeared, leaving behind false contact details &mdash; a vivid illustration of how isolated and cash-strapped the Venezuelan government had become.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> By 2020, the fight had moved to the London courts. Venezuela sued to recover the gold &mdash; valued in court filings at roughly $1.95 billion &mdash; arguing it was needed for pandemic relief. 
At the same time, opposition leader Juan Guaid&oacute;, recognized by the U.S. and U.K. as acting president, asserted his own claim to the reserves. Legal gridlock followed.
Now, The Guardian reports the case has taken on new urgency after Maduro&rsquo;s detention by U.S. authorities. While former vice president and current acting president Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez once denounced the gold freeze as &ldquo;blatant piracy,&rdquo; her tone has recently, heh, softened.
Still, Venezuela is unlikely to want its gold stranded indefinitely, especially in light of Russia&rsquo;s sanctioned central-bank assets, frozen since 2022.
With Venezuela&rsquo;s political future uncertain and foreign courts split over legitimacy, the bullion remains in limbo &mdash; locked in London vaults.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Peacock&rsquo;s Put out to Pasture
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> CNBC has officially lost its peacock. 
On Dec. 13, 2025, the network quietly rolled out its new logo, the result of NBCUniversal&rsquo;s corporate shell game that spun CNBC into a new entity called Versant. The name stays. The bird does not.
The replacement logo, with a fused N and B, is a nod to CNBC&rsquo;s original 1989 logo:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5narR9NjQ44vaiNJ8m0EGI/01b188dffd62873837dc520a19838687/FMF-Issue-010926_2_.png" alt="pub" width="247px" />
After&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6JkmLkRYmuojzGcUirq7nx/bf94ebc04a6cd6aaa1eb41e3a610489c/FMF-Issue-010926_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Anonymous designer: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure everyone involved was simply relieved to call it done.&rdquo;
If this seems familiar, last year MSNBC got its own makeover into MS NOW. Different network, same minimalist logo drained of all personality.
And if Cracker Barrel is any indication, when legacy brands shed their familiar graphics, it&rsquo;s usually not just a design change. It&rsquo;s a complete vibe shift.
Happy Friday, reader! Watch your inbox for Saturday&rsquo;s recap issue. Take care&hellip;

FMF-Issue-010926(Featured)

mobile masthead 5MIN

Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

CES 2026: Amazon Intel

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />A Sun-Seeker Visits Vegas
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas isn&rsquo;t just about the flashiest gadgets. It&rsquo;s where early prototypes sit next to finished products and where you occasionally stumble onto something that feels slightly ahead of its time.
That&rsquo;s exactly the feeling surrounding one of the more subtly ambitious debuts at CES 2026: the Solar Mars Bot from Silicon Valley-based company Jackery.
Jackery is already well known to CES regulars. For more than a decade, it has built a reputation in portable energy, off-grid power and home backup solutions.
This year, Jackery showed off plenty of familiar hardware, from new portable power stations to an eye-catching solar gazebo designed to turn outdoor space into a living room or home office.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But the solar product that&rsquo;s drawing attention at this year&rsquo;s CES isn&rsquo;t fixed in place. Instead, it roams. 
Mounted on wheels and paired with auto-retractable 300-watt solar panels, the solar bot can navigate autonomously, reposition itself during the day and adjust its angle to capture more sunlight.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3llo4wO3bS2rNGg9kBx4Xc/4fa894e0bf6d61418f9398c27ff8eca1/fmf_tweet.png" alt="tweet" width="450px" />
When charging is done, the panels fold back in, making the whole system surprisingly compact for what it does. According to Jackery, the Mars Bot uses AI-enhanced computer vision to avoid obstacles and optimize its placement throughout the day.
The platform can travel at speeds up to 5.9 feet per second, handle modest terrain and tilt its panels up to 60 degrees to improve solar capture as conditions change.
Power is stored in modular LiFePO4 batteries, each rated at 2 kilowatt-hours, with total capacity designed to scale while supporting AC, DC and USB outputs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The idea is simple: Panels capture optimal solar energy, store power onboard and deliver it wherever electricity is needed. The use cases Jackery highlights range from outdoor recreation to emergency or rescue scenarios.
There&rsquo;s also a more forward-looking thread running through the pitch, potentially powering portable satellite internet, future AI systems and personal robotics &mdash; situations where mobile, self-sustaining energy matters as much as raw capacity.
The Solar Mars Bot first appeared as a concept at CES 2024. Seeing it return in 2026 as a working product says something about the next generation of energy capture. Instead of bigger panels or heavier batteries, this is about mobility and autonomy that actively seeks out sunlight rather than passively waiting for it.
CES has always been at its best when it shows how familiar problems can be solved in novel ways. A robot that wanders around looking for sunlight? Feels right at home in Las Vegas or even in your own backyard.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Prediction Season Is in Full Swing&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first full trading week of 2026, and prediction season is in full swing,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;To kick off the new year, I want to share some of my surprise predictions for the next 12 months,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Like stock picking, predictions are all about probability. There are no guarantees.
&ldquo;What I&rsquo;m presenting here are some out-of-consensus views that I think aren&rsquo;t just possible &mdash; they&rsquo;re probable. Outcomes that, if they happen, are going to surprise a lot of folks.
&ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t want you to be caught off guard,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;So here we go!&rdquo;
Small Caps Finally Outperform
&ldquo;In the long term, I&rsquo;m not a fan of small-cap stocks,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re subscale companies with inferior balance sheets and more exposure to variables like inflation, interest rates and commodities.
&ldquo;But right now, they have undemanding valuations. Look at this chart showing the valuation of the midcap stocks over the last few decades&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7Dll8pgzK4LJ84awNl5M9V/360aff89f410bf01350990db9a5452ca/fmf_chart.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;Valuations are back down to relative levels last seen in the late 1990s,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;Back then, we saw a rotation into technology leaders (think today&rsquo;s Mag 7), causing increased multiples in those stocks and lower multiples in everything else.
&ldquo;With an acceleration in non-AI economic growth and lower interest rates, I think the setup for smaller stocks is superb,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;Remember that in 2000, the S&amp;P 500 was down 9% and the Nasdaq was down 40%. But the Russell 2000 was only down 4%, while the equal-weight S&amp;P 500 was up 12%.
&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t think the major indexes will be down as much as they were in 2000,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;But the outperformance of smaller stocks could be just as much.&rdquo;
On Friday, we&rsquo;ll be back with four additional 2026 insights from Enrique &mdash; predictions investors won&rsquo;t want to miss.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The S&amp;P 500 and DJIA hit new intraday highs today, extending their strong start to 2026. But the rally appears to be stalling&hellip; 
The Dow&rsquo;s now pulled back 180 points to 49,280; at the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is still in the green &mdash; up 0.10% to 6,950. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, on the other hand, is up 0.45% to 23,650.
As for commodities, Venezuela will ship sanctioned oil to the U.S. on an ongoing basis, according to White House sources. The president says the initial tranche will total 30&ndash;50 million barrels, sold at market price &mdash; with deliveries expected to continue indefinitely. Proceeds will be held in U.S.-controlled accounts and released at Washington&rsquo;s discretion.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed the arrangement today, saying the U.S. will market both stored Venezuelan crude and future production. Oil that previously flowed largely to China will now be rerouted directly to U.S. ports.
The price of crude, at the time of writing, is down 1.30% to $56.38 for a barrel of WTI. According to CNBC taking data from Reuters: &ldquo;Oil prices slip as traders react to expected increased supply from Venezuela.&rdquo; Huh. But Valero Energy (VLO) shares are up 4.15%.
Precious metals? Gold and silver are both in the red: down 0.55% (to $4,469.70 per ounce) and 3.90% (to $77.90) respectively. More on silver in a moment.
Finally, the crypto market is likewise in the red; Bitcoin&rsquo;s pulled back 1.30% to $91,385 while Ethereum&rsquo;s lost 2.45% to $3,160.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Existing Mines Beat Blueprints
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Precious metal miners have done very well over the past year. But today I&rsquo;m going to show why silver miners in particular have much further to run,&rdquo; says The Daily Reckoning editor Adam Sharp.
In 2025, gold rose about 70%, but silver did even better, jumping over 150%. At first glance, it might seem logical to assume mining profits rose by similar percentages.
But as Adam explains, mining profits don&rsquo;t rise in a straight line with metal prices. That&rsquo;s because most mining costs are relatively fixed. Once those costs are covered, each additional dollar increase in the price of silver flows disproportionately to the bottom line.
Adam points to Pan American Silver (PAAS) as a clear, real-world example. The company publishes its all-in sustaining cost (AISC), a widely followed metric that captures the cost to produce each ounce of metal.
In Q1 2024, Pan American&rsquo;s AISC for silver was about $16.68 per ounce, while its realized silver price averaged $22.61. That left a margin of about $6 per ounce.
Fast-forward to Q3 2025 and the picture changes dramatically. Average silver prices climbed to around $39 per ounce, while costs edged slightly lower. Profit per ounce rose to around $23 &mdash; nearly four times the margin from early 2024.
And that&rsquo;s before considering higher price scenarios. &ldquo;If silver stays around the current $80 level and their costs stay around $16 per ounce, the profit per ounce will rise to a crazy $64,&rdquo; Adam says. &ldquo;So from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026, many silver miners&rsquo; profitability per ounce has increased by a ridiculous 10X.&rdquo;
Margins are one thing. Volume is another. &ldquo;In Q3 2025, PAAS produced around 5.5 million ounces of silver. If they maintain that production in this current quarter&rdquo; &mdash; at current prices &mdash; &ldquo;the company could earn about $352 million in three months, from silver alone,&rdquo; says Adam.
But silver isn&rsquo;t the company&rsquo;s only revenue stream. In the same quarter, Pan American produced about 183,000 ounces of gold, at an AISC near $1,697 per ounce, adding another powerful profit driver.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;That is a very long way of saying that silver (and gold) miners are absolutely printing money in this environment,&rdquo; Adam emphasizes.
Why is this an unusually favorable setup? Mining is energy-intensive. Diesel and gasoline can account for up to 15% of operating costs. That makes today&rsquo;s sub-$60 oil environment a meaningful tailwind.
Adam says this setup may rival &mdash; or even exceed &mdash; past bull markets. &ldquo;I would argue this is one of the all-time great environments for miners.&rdquo;
Established miners have a clear advantage. Unlike explorers and developers, they already operate permitted, long-life mines. New projects, by contrast, still face years &mdash; often decades &mdash; of regulatory reviews, financing and construction before they ever produce an ounce, especially outside the U.S.
Adam&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;I want to primarily invest in the companies making a killing today,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Not ones that have a long road of capital raises and permitting ahead of them.
&ldquo;Hopefully this [helps] explain why despite huge gains over the past year, I haven&rsquo;t sold a single silver miner,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;And I have no plans to anytime soon.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Davos Stops Dissembling
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s something almost reassuring about Davos in January. Like clockwork, the world&rsquo;s power trippers and control freaks gather in the picturesque Swiss ski town.
But in January 2024, our managing editor Dave Gonigam noticed <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/davos-welcomes-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">something unusual at the World Economic Forum.</a> Amid performative panic over &ldquo;misinformation&rdquo; and hypothetical pandemics, a few heavyweight figures in finance did something that wasn&rsquo;t supposed to happen: They acknowledged Donald Trump might not be the cartoon villain of Davos&rsquo; imagination.
Trump wasn&rsquo;t exactly embraced. Just&hellip; quietly acknowledged. JPMorgan&rsquo;s CEO Jamie Dimon, for instance, who spent most of his professional life orbiting Democratic politics, admitted that Trump had been &ldquo;kind of right&rdquo; on NATO, immigration, trade and China. Not a love letter; just a balance-sheet observation.
At the time, it felt faintly subversive. (Maybe even a slip of the tongue chalked up to altitude sickness?) After all, Davos is a place where acceptable opinions are carefully curated.
Now, Microsoft, crypto company Ripple and management consulting firm McKinsey have each agreed to pay up to $1 million to sponsor &ldquo;USA House,&rdquo; a Davos venue that will serve as a base for U.S. government officials during President Trump&rsquo;s visit later this month. (JPMorgan Chase has also been approached to participate, though the bank has not publicly confirmed whether it will sign on.)
The venue itself is a small 19th-century church just outside the forum&rsquo;s official security perimeter &mdash; which somehow feels like a metaphor.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Gw0DicozusaaFL3KHjfbq/7c1c60c771fb6a727eb766f11d97fc3d/fmf_headline.png" alt="Headline" width="350px" />
Courtesy: X
To be clear, Davos has always had its unofficial &ldquo;house&rdquo; system. Countries and corporations convert shops and hotels into networking hubs every January.
What&rsquo;s different this year is that U.S. companies are no longer quietly hedging. They&rsquo;re openly positioning themselves around power brokers in Trump&rsquo;s political orbit &mdash; a shift that sits neatly alongside the WEF&rsquo;s 2026 theme: &ldquo;A Spirit of Dialogue.&rdquo;
And they&rsquo;re doing it in the most Davos way possible: discreetly, at a premium price, while pretending it was always part of the plan.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />James Altucher: Right on the Money
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Bull&rsquo;s-eye&hellip; James Altucher was right on target with this one! Zing! Spot-on!&rdquo; writes an enthusiastic contributor about our New Year&rsquo;s Day 5 Bullets edition, featuring five of James&rsquo; 2026 predictions.
I&rsquo;m signing off for the day&hellip; Take care, reader!

fmf hero 010726

Can Robots Get a Suntan? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wait, what?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3EfPtQoU6SHk9mRgPqBTwg/c257f5a3b14893821be5aea4e398f263/FMF-Issue-010626_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
From the Reuters newswire: &ldquo;The United States may subsidize oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela's energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Monday.&rdquo;
Trump told NBC that reviving the Venezuelan oil industry will require &ldquo;a lot of money.
&ldquo;A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they&rsquo;ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Well, I guess that answers the question we were pondering yesterday: What incentive do U.S. oil firms have to sink prodigious amounts of capital into rebuilding Venezuela&rsquo;s oil industry when oil prices sit near five-year lows?
I confess to a lack of imagination. My limited mind did not allow for the possibility that the administration might resort to soaking the U.S. taxpayer &mdash; handing their hard-earned dollars to Exxon, Chevron et al.
And so, on further reflection, I take back what I said yesterday &mdash; about how investing in post-Maduro Venezuela would be like investing in post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
There will be plenty of moneymaking opportunities coming out of this regime-change op &mdash; even if Venezuela sinks into chaos, with leftist paramilitaries sabotaging the pipelines to ensure the Yanquis are deprived of the country&rsquo;s oil wealth.
Yesterday, our James Altucher convened an urgent &ldquo;all-hands&rdquo; strategy session with his analysts to discuss the post-Maduro landscape. Out of respect for his paying subscribers, I won&rsquo;t say too much about the recommendations that came out of this livestream&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &hellip;but I can reveal this much: Venezuela has put James back on the Bitcoin train.
If you&rsquo;ve been with us for a while, you&rsquo;ll recall James sold all his Bitcoin in early 2022 &mdash; having first recommended it in 2013 at a mere $114.
His rationale for selling? &ldquo;When I make an investment, the one thing I want to make sure of is managing my risk,&rdquo; he said at the time. &ldquo;With crypto now, I need to see it being used by people [because] it makes their lives better. But nobody really needs to use Bitcoin&hellip;&rdquo;
In other words, he saw more potential in Ethereum and a select few alt-coins that are actually used to conduct commerce. Bitcoin, in contrast, was evolving into digital gold &mdash; a reserve asset that you accumulate as a hedge against geopolitical or societal or currency turmoil.
Which is exactly what Venezuela is experiencing now, right?
&ldquo;When countries go through moments like this,&rdquo; says James this week, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t wait around to see what happens to their currency or their savings. They move into assets that sit outside the system.
&ldquo;When a local currency fails, people don't wait for a new government&mdash; they move to the only asset the state can&rsquo;t seize or inflate.
&ldquo;This could be a large adoption event, and one more catalyst for mass crypto adoption.&rdquo;
<a id="2"></a>
To be sure, the crypto space enjoyed a big pop after Maduro&rsquo;s capture on Saturday &mdash; and those gains are sticking more than 72 hours later, with Bitcoin approaching $94,000 and Ethereum a shade below $3,300.
More insight from James follows immediately&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Hyundai&rsquo;s Humanoid Robot
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big highlight so far this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas fulfills a prediction James Altucher made in this space on New Year&rsquo;s Day&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/30Nkny4XFTRtJjkgGNOV3P/7c85e0c290affda5b8357d0185cc6da2/FMF-Issue-010626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Hyundai Motor Group says it will roll out human-like robots in its factories from 2028,&rdquo; reports the BBC, &ldquo;as major companies race to use the new technology.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s robot, named Atlas, showed its stuff on the convention floor yesterday &mdash; including the capacity to lift 110 pounds. Hyundai says it &ldquo;plans to integrate Atlas across its global network.&rdquo;
Time was that James Altucher wasn&rsquo;t sold on humanoid robots. Then it dawned on him, as he explained in our New Year&rsquo;s Day special edition: &ldquo;The entire world has been constructed to fit 8,000,000,000 5&rsquo;8&rdquo;, two-armed, two-legged humans.
&ldquo;If you want a robot that can vacuum, make a bed, cook, pack goods, stack shelves, move objects down hallways, climb stairs, open doors and work inside spaces already optimized for people&hellip; you don&rsquo;t redesign the world.
&ldquo;You redesign the worker. That worker is humanoid.&rdquo;
James points out there were fewer than 1,000 humanoid robots worldwide in 2023 &mdash; a number that grew to 25,000 by last year.
He expects that number to swell to 100,000 this year&hellip; and a million next year. Critical mass.
&ldquo;Humanoid robots solve a problem governments, corporations and societies cannot solve any other way,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s before we account for use cases we haven&rsquo;t even imagined yet.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Floor Under Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Silver is back within sight of $80 an ounce &mdash; with two big drivers behind it here in early January.
On New Year&rsquo;s Day, the Chinese government implemented a new export-licensing scheme for silver.
&ldquo;That means 60&ndash;70% of the globally traded refined supply will require Beijing&rsquo;s permission to leave the country,&rdquo; writes money manager Charlie Garcia. China needs that silver to build out its solar-panel and electric-vehicle capacity.
And it&rsquo;s not as if the rest of the world can wave a magic wand to spin up new production.
Garcia reminds us there&rsquo;s very little &ldquo;primary&rdquo; silver mining. Most silver production is a byproduct from gold mining, copper mining and so on. &ldquo;This means you can&rsquo;t just &lsquo;mine more silver&rsquo; because silver prices went up,&rdquo; Garcia writes for MarketWatch. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have to mine more copper first.&rdquo;
Meanwhile&hellip; Bloomberg will steadily recalibrate its Bloomberg Commodity Index starting on Thursday and continuing into next week. Because silver soared 147% during 2025, its weight in the index will rise from 4% to around 9%. There&rsquo;s a lot of institutional money tied to this index, and it is moving into silver ahead of this shift.
Yes, both of these developments are known quantities and have been for weeks. They&rsquo;re not anything actionable. But they do have the effect of keeping a floor under the silver price.
Even the most pessimistic observers we follow think the floor on silver is now $50 &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll remind you is where silver was trading only three months ago before this furious rally.
Checking our screens, silver is now back over $80 for the first time since last week &mdash; up $3.73 today alone.
And gold is up $29 to $4,477 &mdash; the highest since a steep sell-off a week ago Monday.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s going to be a nail-biter, but today might be the day the S&amp;P 500 sets a record close.
The last one came at the end of the abbreviated Christmas Eve trading session &mdash; 6,932. At last check, the index rests at 6,933 &mdash; up a half-percent on the day. The Dow is also firmly in the green at 49,179 &mdash; on track to top yesterday&rsquo;s record. The Nasdaq is also staging a modest rally, but it has work to do before exceeding its late-October highs.
The Venezuela-fueled burst of enthusiasm for energy stocks we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s trading is cooling off: Chevron is down nearly 3%, Exxon down 1.2% and the XLE ETF down 1.4%.
Crude, meanwhile, is little changed at $58.15.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wow, and people call me a cynic&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/DzwgnlQRvEUcXuKxqV91w/588995ca19a4e1e773dbf31f40ce8bc4/FMF-Issue-010626_3_.png.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And speaking of Venezuela&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Venezuela, Kimmel
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;A most excellent single-issue piece you did there on that boneheaded gangsta move on Venezuela. Spot-on!!&rdquo; a longtime reader writes after yesterday&rsquo;s edition.
&ldquo;You and I have been around long enough to know that funny things can and will happen on the way to the forum. In other words, look out for the myriad of unintended consequences.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I thought this was an investment publication not let&rsquo;s-kick-Trump&rsquo;s-ass publication,&rdquo; counters a critic.
&ldquo;Yes, oil is important and several oil companies are owed billions of dollars by Venezuela and this has been adjudicated.&rdquo;
Another critical email, more measured: &ldquo;The idea of ousting Maduro wasn't just a Trump idea. Biden thought about it but didn't have the control of his administration or the backbone.
&ldquo;Ousting Maduro seems to be because of a myriad of reasons, probably even more deeper than you even know. The players including China, Russia, Iran/Hezbollah at least. It has to be agreed that these players in our backyard have to be corrected!
&ldquo;The USA has been involved in so many conflicts far away. It's about time we keep our hemisphere safe from these bad actors.&rdquo;
Dave responds: To the first point, American companies do business overseas and get hosed by foreign governments all the time. It&rsquo;s a risk that comes with the territory of operating in countries where the rule of law isn&rsquo;t followed in the way you and I typically think of it.
Do you seriously propose that U.S. special forces be deployed every time some tinhorn dictator gives the shaft to a Fortune 500 company?
Meanwhile&hellip; to whatever extent China, Russia and Iran are meddling in the Western Hemisphere, it&rsquo;s a response to many decades of U.S. meddling in those nations&rsquo; backyards.
And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine. He&rsquo;s threatening once more to bomb Iran. He continues to station nearly 80,000 troops in Japan and South Korea that China sees as a direct threat. (There is no remotely comparable Chinese presence on our doorstep.)
One more thought&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3KPOzHLBIRGKeyJQqORqVM/b2fa932380003dbe23eae1795554da7b/FMF-Issue-010626_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Great article, Dave. I struggle with the freedom of speech/censorship debate. In the end, I just want the truth! I can handle the truth!&rdquo; a reader writes after we <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mafia-tactics-fcc-vs-dis">revisited</a> the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle over the holidays.
&ldquo;Maybe we shouldn&rsquo;t have censorship and strong-arm tactics as both the Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated they&rsquo;re not afraid to use, but there may be a better way to do this:
<ul>
<li>Require news outlets to double-source with names in published reports</li>
<li>Eliminate anonymous sources as a means to establish legitimacy for whatever is in the article. If a news outlet won&rsquo;t subject themselves to those two requirements, then they have become an opinion outlet and a banner should run above them with the following quote during their broadcast: &lsquo;This segment does not follow proper journalistic practices and should be considered opinion and LIKELY UNTRUE&rsquo;</li>
<li>If something that is reported and double-sourced is not true, the Justice Department can go after the sources and not the news outlet.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Maybe that will clean up the disinformation and propaganda being sold as truthful news.&rdquo;
Dave: In effect, you&rsquo;re proposing every news outlet register with the feds &mdash; and that they&rsquo;d be licensed to practice their trade.
Your intentions are noble &mdash; but you&rsquo;re putting even more power in the hands of Washington, D.C. bureaucrats than they already have!

FMF-Issue-010626(Featured)

James Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Locked out of the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The financial media are flailing around &mdash; trying to make sense of the nonsensical.
Case in point: This morning&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal&hellip;
<blockquote>Call it the glass half-full market.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In recent weeks, government data has been mixed, showing disappointing job gains and robust economic growth. But U.S. investors are focusing on the positive side of things, piling into bets that suggest they have strong confidence that the economy will keep powering forward.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The Dow Jones Industrial average is off to its best start to a year since 2003&hellip;</blockquote>
As related here on Friday, the December job numbers were mediocre. Actually, most of 2025&rsquo;s job numbers were mediocre.
But at the same time, &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by gross domestic product is going gangbusters. Shortly before Christmas, the Commerce Department reported that GDP grew during the third quarter at an annualized 4.3%. And if the &ldquo;GDPNow&rdquo; figures crunched by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are any indication, the fourth quarter was even stronger.
So what gives?
After all, you&rsquo;re probably sick and tired by now of hearing about a strong economy while you or people you know are struggling&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The problem lies in what the media and the politicians and Wall Street call &ldquo;the economy.&rdquo; It has zero relationship to what you and I think of as the American Dream &mdash; an ever-improving standard of living and the aspiration that your kids will live a better life than you.
When they talk about the economy, they mean GDP &mdash; a statistical abstraction that has nothing to do with your own prosperity.
Here&rsquo;s how preposterous GDP is &mdash; and this is an illustration spelled out years ago by Bill Bonner, the founder of Paradigm&rsquo;s parent firm: If you mow your lawn, and your neighbor mows his lawn, that has no effect on GDP. But if you pay your neighbor $40 to mow your lawn, and he pays you $40 to mow his, GDP miraculously grows by $80!
But it&rsquo;s much worse than that, as the venture capitalist Peter Thiel pointed out in 2022.
Compare American life in the 1950s, he said, with American life now. If &ldquo;you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who&rsquo;s a child-carer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that&rsquo;s happened.&rdquo;
In other words, it took only one income back in the day to support a middle-class standard of living. Now it takes both parents, scratching and struggling. But if you&rsquo;re an egghead economist, it&rsquo;s all good because &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by GDP is bigger.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Actually, if you dig into the latest GDP report, there&rsquo;s some useful insight that the mainstream mostly overlooks. It reveals why so many people feel locked out of the American Dream.
The report dug into consumer spending habits &mdash; which on the surface, were strong.
But beneath the surface you find a huge disconnect among the top 10% of income earners and everyone else.
Demographer Neil Howe elaborated during his most recent podcast: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking about, at the high end, spending out of asset gains.
&ldquo;This is one way in which, among many, we see equity markets driving the economy. You know, you think it&rsquo;s supposed to be the other way around, right?... But here&rsquo;s one more case in which it&rsquo;s really, without these asset gains, you would not have the top 10% spending like that.
&ldquo;Then, the bottom end &mdash; borrowing, right? The increase in buy-now, pay-later plans. The overall savings rate declined from 5.0% to 4.2%.&rdquo;
Apart from the COVID calamity, the savings rate hasn&rsquo;t been this low since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
No savings, no ability to build for the future &mdash; and no American Dream.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The American Dream of prosperity accessible to all has turned into a nightmarishly stratified society&hellip;
<ul>
<li>A top 0.1% elite that&rsquo;s amassed a greater and greater share of overall wealth during the first 25 years of this century</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The next 9.9% who can still live comfortably</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Another 40% below that top 10% who have retirement accounts and some home equity, but by and large live paycheck-to-paycheck &mdash; even if they command six-figure household incomes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And a bottom 50% who have no investments, no home equity &mdash; and no hope.</li>
</ul>
Now, perhaps, you have a better understanding of why &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as defined by the Establishment can be &ldquo;strong&rdquo; &mdash; but few people are happy.
Our ethos at Paradigm Press is to empower you to move up a level from wherever you are now. It&rsquo;s still possible to overcome the blunders and deceits of the politicians and Wall Street types.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Fed Pressure and Precious Metals
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For all the caterwauling you see in the media, nothing has fundamentally changed now that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is in the Justice Department&rsquo;s crosshairs.
Late Friday, the DOJ delivered subpoenas to Fed headquarters at the Marriner Eccles Building in Washington.
As it happens, renovations to the Eccles building appear to be at the center of the investigation: Did Powell lie to Congress last summer when he said the renovation plans are not as lavish as reported by the New York Post?
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no VIP dining room, there&rsquo;s no new marble,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are no special elevators. There are no new water features, there&rsquo;s no beehives and there&rsquo;s no roof terrace gardens.&rdquo;
Which, according to a subsequent Post story, &ldquo;directly contradicted the project&rsquo;s own planning documents, which were signed off on by government pen pushers in 2021 &mdash; and which haven&rsquo;t been revised since.&rdquo;
Last night, Powell issued a video statement &mdash; really, it looked like a hostage video &mdash; in which he said the subpoenas were aimed at intimidating the Fed into lowering interest rates faster than it has to date.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7sZE65DfWvy1LUvGhN1cQy/7ad3fffc418fc7f44ff36bf6f3ffa255/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Maybe he was blinking &ldquo;We&rsquo;re doomed, buy gold!&rdquo; in Morse code?
To hear the mainstream tell it, the stock market fell at the start of today&rsquo;s trading because of the Trump administration&rsquo;s threat to the Fed&rsquo;s &ldquo;independence.&rdquo;
We won&rsquo;t belabor the point today about how Fed independence is a myth &mdash; other than to remind you that in the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson shoved Fed chair William McChesney Martin into a wall to reinforce his wishes for lower interest rates. As far as we know, Trump hasn&rsquo;t laid a hand on Powell.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the stock market, Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta says this news in fact means &ldquo;absolutely nothing.&rdquo;
As he put it on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, &ldquo;With market strength broadening, rates and oil prices going lower and good earnings growth - BTSD! (My version &lsquo;Buy the Stupidity Dip&rsquo;).&rdquo;
[You don&rsquo;t have the Paradigm app? You don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re missing. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
And in any event, the stock market reaction was short-lived: What started as a 300-point drop in the Dow has been shaved to less than 100 at last check. That&rsquo;s not even a quarter of a percent. Meanwhile, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are flat on the day.
The major indexes are holding up well despite a downdraft in bank stocks after Donald Trump called for a cap on credit-card interest rates of 10%. JPMorgan Chase is down 1.9% and Citi 3.5%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The link between the Fed subpoenas and the action in precious metals is more clear. 
As our macro maven Jim Rickards tweeted, &ldquo;Gold at a new all-time high. Jay Powell under criminal investigation. First rule of intelligence analysis &mdash; there are no coincidences.&rdquo;
Powell is out the door in four more months regardless because that&rsquo;s when his term ends. But &ldquo;Trump may feel he needs Powell out longer before midterms to give the economy time to heat up,&rdquo; observes Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring. In other words, the Fed might begin mashing the monetary gas pedal sooner than expected.
With that, gold is up $110 as we write to a record $4,618. Silver is up $5.55 to a staggering $85.39. And the HUI index of mining stocks is *this* close to the 800 mark.
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude is flat &mdash; a little over $59. As for crypto, Bitcoin is trying to reclaim the $92,000 level while Ethereum has surpassed $3,100.
More musings about the Fed next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Those Other Times a Fed Chair Lied&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Never mind Fed independence &mdash; how about Fed accountability?
If Jerome Powell lied to Congress, he wouldn&rsquo;t be the first Fed chair to do so.
As we&rsquo;ve chronicled in years past, Ben Bernanke &mdash; who was chair during the 2008 financial crisis &mdash; is known to have committed perjury at least twice.
<ul>
<li>Bernanke told Congress the bonds the Fed inherited in 2008 from the failure of Bear Stearns were investment-grade. Bloomberg News discovered in 2010 &mdash; only after filing a lawsuit &mdash; they were, in fact, junk</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Bernanke also told Congress in February 2010, &ldquo;We have no plans whatsoever to be involved in any foreign bailouts.&rdquo; In reality, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse topped the list of banks that dumped their crappy mortgage-backed securities on the Fed between 2007&ndash;09.</li>
</ul>
And that leaves out Bernanke&rsquo;s still-murky role in Bank of America&rsquo;s shotgun marriage with Merrill Lynch during the worst of the 2008 crisis. BofA CEO Ken Lewis failed to inform his shareholders at the time about Merrill&rsquo;s huge losses, as the law required. In 2009, Lewis said he withheld that information on orders from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who was acting &ldquo;at the request&rdquo; of Ben Bernanke.
Seems Bernanke was lying about matters that did far more harm to everyday Americans than some posh renovations that went over budget.
But he never even got a strongly worded letter, much less the handcuffs-and-leg-irons treatment. And so it goes&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Not exactly new, but perhaps newly relevant?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7q7mRYt6FoDRWivbbTfeHI/f478ed2dc64d72d0b749d38f40856fb5/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Ukraine, Small Business
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Was disappointed in false information that Dave Gonigam expressed in last Tuesday&rsquo;s edition,&rdquo; a reader writes.
The reader takes exception to a brief passage about Washington meddling overseas in which your editor stated, "And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine."
&ldquo;The United States is not arming Ukraine,&rdquo; the reader asserts. &ldquo;President Trump has explicitly stated many times that the USA is selling arms to NATO countries (at a profit) and THEY are choosing to provide the arms to Ukraine. President Trump has said many times publicly that we have spent enough of our money giving arms to Ukraine and will no longer continue to do so.
&ldquo;And oh, by the way, why use the word &lsquo;meddling&rsquo;? This war was inherited by President Trump. You consider us &lsquo;meddling&rsquo; in it? The president is trying to end it. (!)
&ldquo;I look forward to seeing a publicized correction. Facts matter, especially in a service such as Paradigm Press.&rdquo;
Dave responds: 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4h1Oms01CM8aYI5p4m7ZMG/7ce4e4ffbb4090acbf3b307c989ae6fe/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
"We're going to send some more weapons,&rdquo; Trump himself said the day of that statement. &ldquo;We have to."
And it&rsquo;s not just &ldquo;defensive.&rdquo; Who honestly believes that Kyiv could have launched nearly 100 drones on one of Vladimir Putin&rsquo;s homes at the end of 2025 without knowledge and coordination from Washington?
Unless and until Trump announces he&rsquo;s washing his hands of the whole affair, yes, he&rsquo;s meddling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On the subject of the Chicago Bears&rsquo; attempt to squeeze out special favors from taxpayers for a new stadium, a reader brings up &ldquo;the evil not mentioned.
&ldquo;The big/large companies can negotiate for special treatment, often motivated by business-unfriendly policies in the given city/state or move to another state.
&ldquo;What went unsaid is that the many small businesses have to labor under the business-unfriendly nature of their locations, thus propping up the legitimacy of a local bad business environment.&rdquo;
Dave: Good point. Small business has been getting the shaft over and over in recent years &mdash; starting with lockdown in 2020, when small retailers had to close their doors while Walmart, Target and Costco stayed open.
Nobody noticed because it was Christmas Day, but The Wall Street Journal published a worthwhile story about how for small businesses, &ldquo;years of high inflation, increasingly cautious consumers and tariffs are weighing on earnings and prompting cutbacks. Over the past six months, private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily shed jobs, according to payroll processor ADP, cutting 120,000 in November alone. Midsize and, especially, large firms have continued to add jobs.&rdquo;
Indeed the article points out how the divide between big and small businesses is fueling the divide between high- and low-income Americans.
&ldquo;Workers at small businesses tend to earn less than those at large companies. And the increases in stock-market wealth stemming from the rally in shares of large, public companies accrue mostly to the rich.&rdquo;
And so we end where we began today: It&rsquo;s not a robust economy driving stock market gains. It&rsquo;s stock market gains propping up the economy, as more and more people feel locked out of the American Dream.
We&rsquo;ll dig deeper into the theme tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-12-26(Featured)

Locked out of the American Dream

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It Was Never About Drugs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gee what was the title of our Nov. 18 edition?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jisCiWvsqCObI1sLN0MS8/f2aa19548d7f69bc6c11366858167318/fmf_headline.jpg" alt="5 Bullets Headline" />
And there was Donald Trump on Saturday, saying as much as he read from a prepared statement: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have our very large United States oil companies&hellip; go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll come back to the &ldquo;making money&rdquo; thought shortly &mdash; seeing as that&rsquo;s our stock in trade.
But do note that when the deposed Venezuelan President Nicol&aacute;s Maduro goes to court in New York today, there won&rsquo;t be one word about fentanyl &mdash; because that word shows up nowhere in the 25-page indictment. (On the other hand, Maduro is charged with possessing machine guns in his own country &mdash; which somehow runs afoul of the 1934 National Firearms Act?!)
Also note Trump&rsquo;s pardon late last year of the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez was doing 45 years for&hellip; drug trafficking.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Conventional wisdom has it that the story is already over. Reality check: It&rsquo;s just beginning.
The president who for years derided nation-building projects now says Washington will &ldquo;run the country&rdquo; of Venezuela &ldquo;for the time being.&rdquo;
&ldquo;For the time being,&rdquo; Trump has thrown Maduro&rsquo;s opposition under the bus, knowing it has little public support, figuring he stands a better chance of stabilizing the situation with&hellip; Maduro&rsquo;s vice president?!
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ArNTOJEv8eRld1OI0OkV4/13fff2951c031c5e5b104bd8d546dd34/fmf_wsj_headline.jpg" alt="WSJ Headline" />
Hmmm&hellip; Vice President Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez&rsquo;s father was tortured to death by a pro-Washington regime in 1976, when she was 6 years old. As far as she&rsquo;s concerned, she says Maduro is still the rightful president.
Again, the story is just beginning &mdash; victory laps you see on social media notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the investment implications&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About That Oil Bounty&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Talking about investment prospects in post-Maduro Venezuela is as premature as it was with post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
Not that reality has dawned yet on Mr. Market this morning: The oil field services stocks like Schlumberger (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL) are both up over 6%.
But how likely is it, really, that &ldquo;our very large United States oil companies&rdquo; are poised to sweep into Venezuela and exploit the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves after years of neglect under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Ch&aacute;vez? And even if they do, how quickly would those reserves come into production?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Oil is not water you just turn on from a faucet,&rdquo; tweets an anonymous hedge fund portfolio manager.
&ldquo;Look at the oil patches in the U.S. and Canada &mdash; these are world-class assets with the best infrastructure, labor and capital inflow on the planet. Go out there just once and see for yourself how oil is actually discovered, drilled and transported.
&ldquo;Even in these top-tier jurisdictions, things don&rsquo;t move that fast. And yet, you think infrastructure and networks that have been rotting for decades under underinvestment, neglect and corruption can just be restored overnight?&rdquo;
That takes a massive infusion of capital &mdash; which is hard for the industry to justify when oil is trading near five-year lows.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And that&rsquo;s assuming Venezuela does not descend into Iraq- or Libya-level chaos.
The Venezuelan-American journalist Jos&eacute; Ni&ntilde;o foresees a worst-case scenario &mdash; &ldquo;a multifactional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis and a protracted insurgency that could justify further U.S. intervention and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from across the region.&rdquo;
Trump refuses to rule out &ldquo;boots on the ground&rdquo; to impose Washington&rsquo;s will on a country that&rsquo;s more than twice the land area of Iraq &mdash; featuring everything from Andean mountains to Amazon jungle.
&ldquo;This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o wrote last fall &mdash; &ldquo;with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces&hellip;
&ldquo;It should be stressed that Venezuela&rsquo;s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical U.S. invasion since the Ch&aacute;vez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance &mdash; making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And if Trump decides not to play ball with Acting President Rodr&iacute;guez after all? 
That seems quite likely, by the way: &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t do what&rsquo;s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,&rdquo; Trump told The Atlantic yesterday.
&ldquo;The Venezuelan opposition itself is deeply divided,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o writes.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mar&iacute;a Corina Machado gets all the headlines, begging for American-engineered regime change &mdash; but she doesn&rsquo;t speak for all of Maudro&rsquo;s rivals.
&ldquo;Most people who want a military solution and a U.S. invasion do not live in Venezuela,&rdquo; says Henrique Capriles &mdash; who lost an election to Maduro in 2013 and has stayed in Venezuela throughout. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t even understand the consequences of it,&rdquo; he told the BBC last summer.
He added pointedly to The New York Times, &ldquo;Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention.&rdquo;
A U.S. war game conducted during the first Trump administration concluded that U.S. intervention would result in &ldquo;chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it,&rdquo; national security consultant Douglas Farah wrote in a report to Pentagon officials.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Rush to Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The financial consequences of regime change in Venezuela extend far beyond energy.
A group of 17 former U.S. intelligence professionals wrote an open letter to Donald Trump in November, warning that &ldquo;U.S. &lsquo;maximum-pressure&rsquo; policies and saber-rattling in the Caribbean make us look like bullies throughout Latin America if not the world &mdash; a hegemon desperate to show it can act ruthlessly and with impunity in what it considers its backyard.&rdquo;
And now that Maduro is in the dock?
A handful of financial professionals on X compare the present moment to Joe Biden&rsquo;s decision four years ago to freeze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank.
As we&rsquo;ve hammered away in this space ever since, that one move prompted every government on less-than-friendly terms with Washington to wonder, Are we next?
One more time, a chart we can&rsquo;t share often enough &mdash; showing how central bank accumulation of gold soared since 2022. (The 2025 figures are through the end of the third quarter.)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;If the freezing of Russian assets in 2022 was the crack in the foundation of global finance, the capture of Nicol&aacute;s Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve is the sledgehammer,&rdquo; says one observer. &ldquo;When money isn&rsquo;t safe, countries accelerate de-dollarization and diversify into hard assets like gold and Bitcoin that exist outside the &lsquo;clutch&rsquo; of any single jurisdiction.&rdquo;
U.S. regime change in Venezuela, &ldquo;will be remembered in history for reasons most inside the West will have no understanding or comprehension of,&rdquo; says the provocative Sirius Report account on X &mdash; which also invokes the Russian asset freeze. &ldquo;Meanwhile the Global South will have finally had any lasting shred of doubt removed.&rdquo;
One more&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3dTRgLvIG6ukxSqjCV8B0g/d9c6b702af78ef38a80c4b7e9fe92831/fmf_singh_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
Is it any coincidence gold is up $111 at last check to $4,441? Or that silver is up nearly four bucks to $76.59? Or that Bitcoin sits at a seven-week high near $94,000?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Reaping the Whirlwind: China, Iran&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Only hours before the U.S. operation to capture Maduro, he was meeting with a high-level delegation from China &mdash; led by President Xi Jinping&rsquo;s special envoy to Latin America.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yhKAz89jVTgu4tdpfaWTl/352e7a837ad5de7d8f35b0ebc1c3c27d/fmf_brics_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
As you might expect, Beijing does not look kindly on the regime-change op &mdash; the Chinese foreign ministry condemning the &ldquo;U.S.&rsquo; blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president.&rdquo;
Important point: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela is still in place.
Last week, the shipping trade publication Lloyd&rsquo;s List reported that a Chinese-flagged oil tanker, the Thousand Sunny, is on its way to Venezuela to load a shipment of crude. At present its position is about halfway between Africa and South America, which puts it on track for a mid-January arrival.
Context: China has become the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil by far. It doesn&rsquo;t particularly need Venezuelan crude; Beijing is simply propping up Maduro&rsquo;s government.
Further context: As I noted in 5 Bullets last month, a Russian vessel delivering oil-processing chemicals to Venezuela arrived at its destination without challenge. Moscow would have surely viewed an attempted boarding/seizure by U.S. forces as an act of war. No doubt Beijing sees things the same way.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But if regime change in Venezuela doesn&rsquo;t bring on a U.S.-China confrontation, it might clear the way for a renewed conflict in the Middle East.
&ldquo;I believe the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro is to secure U.S. control of Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with U.S. backing, launches a new attack on Iran,&rdquo; writes former CIA officer Larry Johnson on his blog.
&ldquo;I suppose you could say that Trump&rsquo;s Monday [Dec. 29] meeting with Netanyahu, which coincided with the eruption of protests in Iran that were likely incited by the MEK &mdash; a terrorist group with direct ties to the CIA and Mossad &mdash; followed by the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife is just a happy series of coincidences&hellip; I don&rsquo;t believe in coincidence.&rdquo;
Already top Israeli politicians like former prime minister Yair Lapid are saying, &ldquo;The regime in Iran should pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela.&rdquo;
As mentioned earlier, it&rsquo;s highly unlikely Venezuelan oil production will be stepped up to any meaningful degree anytime soon &mdash; certainly not on Israel&rsquo;s timetable.
So don&rsquo;t rule out the possibility of a major disruption to Middle East oil supplies this spring or summer &mdash; with no Venezuelan production to make up for it.
On that note, let&rsquo;s tie up some loose ends&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Loose Ends
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The oil market is sniffing out no major changes as a consequence of the Venezuelan regime-change op.
At last check, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up a little less than a buck to $58.20. In other words, no new major constraints to supply&hellip; but also no immediate flood of new oil to the market.
As for the stock market, the major averages are all solidly in the green, with the Dow leading the way &mdash; up nearly 1.5% and over 49,000 for the first time. That makes sense, given the higher concentration of energy stocks in the Dow compared with the other major indexes and the knee-jerk reaction to the Venezuela news.
XLE, the big energy ETF, is up 2.4% as we write. Chevron (CVX), with existing operations in Venezuela that have been subject to on-again, off-again U.S. restrictions, is up over 5%. Exxon (XOM), which has spent years funding think tanks advocating for regime change in Venezuela, is up 2.5%.
The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are both up a little less than 1% &mdash; neither in record territory, although the S&amp;P is close.
We mentioned the huge rally in precious metals earlier. Copper, meanwhile, is in record territory, over $13,000 a ton.
The one economic number of note is the ISM manufacturing index &mdash; down from 48.2 in November to 47.9 in December. That&rsquo;s weaker than expected.
Any number below 50 suggests a shrinking factory sector and except for two months early last year, the index has registered sub-50 readings consistently for three years.
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. We&rsquo;ll tackle more diverse subject matter and catch up on the mailbag tomorrow.
P.S. If memory serves, this might be only the third time I&rsquo;ve devoted the entirety of an issue (more or less) to breaking news.
I daresay the first two have held up pretty well &mdash; the attempt on Donald Trump&rsquo;s life <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-madness-is-just-beginning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">18 months ago</a> and the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/01/07/a-riot-by-another-name/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">five years ago</a>. Only one big flub in retrospect; there were definitely law enforcement who allowed protesters into the U.S. Capitol.
More tomorrow&hellip;

fmf hero 010526

Venezuela Was NEVER About Drugs

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Mafia Tactics
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion,&rdquo; said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing ten days ago.
This truth should be self-evident.
Even Ted Cruz can understand it and he&rsquo;s not the sharpest knife in the drawer (as Tucker Carlson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smemFVe0l5E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demonstrated conclusively</a> last summer).
Cruz was addressing Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission &ndash; and spearhead of the Trump administration&rsquo;s approach to the media industry.
It was Carr who strong-armed Walt Disney Co. (DIS) in September to suspend ABC&rsquo;s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for some asinine remarks about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney wound up reinstating Kimmel less than a week later &ndash; but along the way Carr&rsquo;s pressure tactics affected the fortunes of DIS as well as three other publicly-traded companies.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Cruz is hardly alone in his stance. In fact, the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible thinks the Trump-Carr media policy is &ldquo;a disgrace.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll introduce you to him in a bit, but first&hellip;
Ponder the pivot from the Biden years &ndash; when conservatives understood it was a bad thing for government to browbeat business owners and silence speech it doesn&rsquo;t like.
Conservatives like, well, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr.
In 2021, Democrats were pressuring cable, satellite and streaming providers to drop Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network from their platforms. Carr correctly labeled the effort &ldquo;a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.&rdquo;
In addition, Carr rightly rejected the usual big-government notions of the FCC&rsquo;s role. &ldquo;The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the &lsquo;public interest.&rsquo;&rdquo;
[I put that one in bold for a reason. Stand by...]
Last year, he reiterated his pro-First Amendment stance, denouncing a Democratic proposal he said &ldquo;would empower the FCC to operate as the nation&rsquo;s speech police.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But when Donald Trump elevated Carr to FCC chair at the start of this year, Carr grabbed his badge and billy club &mdash; and got to work right away.
Few people outside government or media really noticed his heavy-handed enforcement tactics until September. That&rsquo;s when Carr undeniably pressured Disney to muzzle Kimmel.
&ldquo;We can do this the easy way or the hard way,&rdquo; Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson. &ldquo;These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there&rsquo;s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.&rdquo;
The following day he told CNBC, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re reinvigorating the FCC&rsquo;s enforcement of the public interest, and I think that&rsquo;s a good thing.&rdquo;
[You can&rsquo;t make this stuff up&hellip;]
The pressure was every bit as in-your-face as when the Biden administration <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/supreme-cowards" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent threatening emails to Big Tech companies</a>, bullying them to take down users&rsquo; posts about COVID: &ldquo;Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.&rdquo;
The only difference is that Carr was exerting his mafia tactics out in the open. As Sen. Cruz said on his own podcast, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right out of a mafioso going into a bar, and going: &lsquo;Nice bar you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it!&rsquo;&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/53TY7QqOAWQ7rUM3E8LAf6/440a4b84b9cab674b907561913aabe68/BrendanCarr.png" alt="Carr" />
Brendan Carr: FCC chair, aspiring mafia don&hellip;
Key point: Disney needs FCC approval for a previously-announced deal between its ESPN unit and the NFL; the NFL would take a 10% equity stake in ESPN while ESPN would acquire NFL Network and other NFL media assets.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Writing on the Wall
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Disney might have stood up to Carr&rsquo;s threats were it not for the ancillary threat to two much smaller companies ABC relies on.
Even before ABC suspended Kimmel&rsquo;s show, Carr&rsquo;s remarks prompted local station owners Nexstar Media Group (NXST) and Sinclair Inc. (SBGI) to pull Kimmel from their ABC affiliates. Together, Nexstar and Sinclair are how ABC reaches nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1dW6v9uWRUDtIHZJwgM0nb/67bae8f2a48bee59ea6e5da10efd7cf9/Map-TV-Stations.png" alt="Map" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Do not underestimate the intimidation factor for Nexstar in particular.
Nexstar hopes to pull off an unprecedented acquisition in the broadcast biz &mdash; and needs FCC approval before it can happen.
Less than a month before Kimmel&rsquo;s comments about Charlie Kirk, NXST announced plans to buy rival Tegna Inc. (TGNA) for $6.2 billion. Nexstar&rsquo;s share price zoomed 14% higher in the days before the announcement, as buzz surrounding the deal swept through the financial media.
If approved, the takeover would result in a level of consolidation never before seen in local TV.
For instance, Nexstar would own both the NBC and CBS affiliates in Tampa. It would own both the NBC and Fox affiliates in Denver. And in Indianapolis, the combined firm would control the NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates.
In a splintered media age, when broadcast television commands a fraction of the audience it did a generation ago, there&rsquo;s no plausible argument against a Nexstar-Tegna tie-up. Still, the FCC will have to rewrite current regulations or issue a waiver for the deal to go through.
Now does it make sense why Nexstar was so quick to pull Kimmel from its ABC stations?
"The decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar,&rdquo; a company flack told Communications Daily at the time &mdash; &ldquo;and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.&rdquo;
They didn&rsquo;t have to. They saw the writing on the wall.
➢ Sinclair&rsquo;s case is different. Sinclair has always been a partisan animal. In 2004, ABC&rsquo;s 11:35 p.m. Eastern timeslot was still occupied by the news program Nightline. Sinclair&rsquo;s ABC affiliates preempted it one night when anchor Ted Koppel read aloud the names of the 721 U.S. troops killed in Iraq up to that point. Sinclair management said the broadcast seemed &ldquo;designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." But even the warmongering Sen. John McCain thought Sinclair&rsquo;s posturing did &ldquo;a grave disservice to the public.&rdquo;
No, I haven&rsquo;t forgotten about the Limbaugh angle. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Reagan&rsquo;s FCC Chief: Carr Is &ldquo;a Disgrace&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible: He was Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s FCC chair, Mark Fowler.
It was at Fowler&rsquo;s behest that the FCC did away with the &ldquo;Fairness Doctrine&rdquo; &mdash; and opened the way for a new, freewheeling era in talk radio.
Introduced in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine required the licensees of radio and TV stations to &ldquo;afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.&rdquo;
Sounds sensible, right? In reality, however, &ldquo;It gave politicians and pressure groups a tool to harass any station that transmitted views they found disagreeable,&rdquo; recalled Jesse Walker, writing in The American Conservative in 2007. &ldquo;Even when it wasn&rsquo;t being deliberately deployed to suppress speech, it made broadcasters less willing to present ideas that might be controversial.&rdquo;
Fowler believed the Fairness Doctrine flew in the face of the First Amendment. On Aug. 4, 1987, the FCC unanimously abolished it.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yntD8OSxzWgvdmJQM8Oo/02305e906b4a23322b308370723fb764/C-Span.png" alt="Fowler" />
Free speech champion: Fowler justifying abolition of the Fairness Doctrine to Congress in 1987
The rest is history.
"It is no accident that Limbaugh&rsquo;s show did not receive national syndication until a few months after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine,&rdquo; broadcast historian Paul Matzko wrote for the Cato Institute after Limbaugh&rsquo;s death in 2021.
Limbaugh himself frequently credited abolition of the Fairness Doctrine with aiding his rise to stardom. And whenever Democrats talked about reviving it, he called such attempts &ldquo;the Hush Rush Law.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler is still around &mdash; he turned 84 in October. What does he say about Brendan Carr&rsquo;s censorship regime?
&ldquo;I know Brendan Carr well enough to know that he knows better. This is exceedingly disappointing&hellip; They&rsquo;re trying to undo everything President Reagan did.&rdquo; Fowler told the trade publication Variety this summer.
And this was before the Kimmel imbroglio.
At the time, Carr was helping Trump engage in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/good-for-wall-street-bad-for-main-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his successful shakedown of CBS</a>. Trump had sued the network on the grounds that the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year amounted to &ldquo;consumer fraud.&rdquo;
Under ordinary circumstances, the suit would have been laughed out of court. But at the time, CBS parent Paramount Global needed FCC approval to merge with Skydance Media. As such, Paramount settled for $16 million and Carr&rsquo;s FCC gave the merger its blessing days later.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It looks like it&rsquo;s corrupt &mdash; and I say that as a Trump donor and supporter&hellip; The law doesn&rsquo;t seem to matter,&rdquo; Fowler said of the CBS case. &ldquo;It feels a bit like the wheels are coming off.&rdquo;
Of Carr&rsquo;s conduct in the Kimmel situation, Fowler is even more scathing. &ldquo;First of all, his views on the First Amendment are totally wrong, and the worst is, he knows it,&rdquo; he tells Communications Daily. &ldquo;If you look back two or three years, he sang quite a different tune, fully First Amendment first.
&ldquo;His approach now is that freedom of speech is ensured by government oversight, really trampling the First Amendment rights of broadcasters for which President Reagan fought so long and hard.
&ldquo;To me, it's personal as well as legal and public policywise. And he is a disgrace. What he is saying, no other Republican chairman, in my view, and even Democratic chairman, has ever said.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Who Decides?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler &ndash; as well as Sen. Cruz &ndash; gets to the heart of the issue: Government has no role as the arbiter of truth.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who shone a bright light on the Biden administration&rsquo;s censorship regime, put it this way in 2023: &ldquo;The authors of the Constitution understood that giving anyone the authority to decide questions of fact would create incentives for censorship, especially since government offices tend to be occupied by people with strong political beliefs.&rdquo;
But too many conservatives, traumatized by Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s murder, seem ready to ditch the principles they held dear as recently as last year. Fowler, they might say, is a fuddy-duddy out of step.
It&rsquo;s time, they say, for gloves off and scorched earth.
&ldquo;Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right,&rdquo; said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) in September. &ldquo;And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel that way anymore,&rdquo; she told the Semafor news site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Stuff like this makes your editor sick to his stomach. 
I broke into the TV news biz during the same summer of 1987 as the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded. I&rsquo;ve spent literally every working day of my adult life exercising the right to freedom of the press &mdash; a right bestowed by the Creator and secured by the First Amendment. That&rsquo;s 20 years in broadcast news, 18 years and counting in financial publishing.
The First Amendment is how the Paradigm editors can speak freely to you. They tip you off to investments they think could change your life. They warn you off investments they think could ruin your life. They do so without fear or favor.
Most important of all, newsletter editors traffic in ideas outside the mainstream. We were the original &ldquo;alternative media.&rdquo; A century ago, people thought Roger Babson was nuts for warning that the Roaring &rsquo;20s would end in tears. But in the end, he was right.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Turnabout Is NOT Fair Play
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If American conservatives can&rsquo;t see the dangers of gloves-off and scorched earth, the acerbic Australian media critic Caitlin Johnstone does.
Her response on X last fall to the &ldquo;Turnabout is fair play!&rdquo; stance&hellip;
<blockquote>That only sounds like a cool argument if you believe the two-party puppet show is real.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In reality you're both lining up to give more and more of your power to the empire which remains in power regardless of who won the last election. They surrender some, you surrender some more, repeat.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Obviously American liberals should have known they were opening themselves up to return fire with their support for censorship when they were in power. Obviously they should not have done that, and people like me told them this the entire time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>That doesn't change the fact that you're handing the nonpartisan oppression machine more power that you will never get back every time you throw your support behind retaliatory acts of speech suppression.</blockquote>
<blockquote>You think you're hurting the libs, but you're just hurting yourself. You're just making your society more tyrannical and dystopian in ways that will inevitably affect you. You're clapping along with the two-handed puppet show like a toddler while your real oppressor picks your pockets.&rdquo; [Emphasis mine]</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And there&rsquo;s nothing new about this dynamic. The late, great George Carlin saw it way back in 1992.
From his Jammin&rsquo; in New York appearance: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all you ever hear about in this country, is our differences. That&rsquo;s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way the ruling class operates in any society: They try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the ****ing money. Fairly simple thing&hellip; happens to work.
&ldquo;You know, anything different, that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.&rdquo;
Or as a meme this year put it even more succinctly&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6n1JLJUkShrNWUweDFM09j/d9ebacea395fdc83f8a652bd37cb9153/Comic-9-25.png" alt="Meme" />

fmf hero 122725

Mafia Tactics: FCC vs. DIS

fmf hero 122625

Health Care On Trial

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Affordability Grinch
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Not to be a downer or anything on Christmas Eve, but was your holiday spending this year a little on the thrifty side?
One or two fewer presents under the tree? A less fancy cut of meat for the Christmas Day entree? It&rsquo;s what you had to do to cope with the cost of living, right?
And others are probably worse off than you. Figures released last month by Bank of America show that nearly a quarter of all households are living paycheck to paycheck &ndash; and that percentage has grown relentlessly in recent years. (The good news: The rate of that growth is slowing.)
I don&rsquo;t mean to depress you. The whole point of this pre-holiday edition of our 5 Bullets is to empower you against the affordability Grinch who&rsquo;s out to steal your Christmas &mdash; as well as your Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and every other day of the year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Before anything else, please wrap your mind around this: The inflation rate is climbing down, but inflation will likely persist for the rest of the 2020s. In economist-speak, inflation will be &ldquo;sticky.&rdquo;
The official U.S. inflation rate topped out in June 2022 at 9.0%. Yes, it&rsquo;s retreated since &ndash; 2.7% as of the most recent reading. Surely you&rsquo;re still feeling the impact.
The Federal Reserve has an official inflation target of 2%. We can forecast confidently that the Fed won&rsquo;t get there for several more years.
In 2022, researchers from Bank of America&rsquo;s U.K. division combed through extensive data going back decades from most of the globe&rsquo;s developed economies.
They found that once inflation pokes its nose over 5%, getting back to 2% takes an average of 10 years. Click the chart to enlarge&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/jhakTnEsrmshwfAZ2QUcW/676dd4a98b24c07467f6622f42d8b3ba/StickyInflation.png" alt="Sticky Inflation" />
A separate study conducted last year by the firm Research Affiliates arrived at the same broad conclusion: &ldquo;Above 8%, reverting to 3% usually takes six&ndash;20 years, with a median of over 10 years.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />OK, we&rsquo;re going to get weird now: Want to know an asset class that&rsquo;s almost a surefire winner for the next five years? It&rsquo;s razor blades.
We&rsquo;re deadly serious. Figure out how many blades you go through in a year, and then go to Costco or Sam&rsquo;s Club or BJ&rsquo;s and buy five times that amount. We can nearly guarantee a return on your investment at the end of the first year because by that time the price will be higher. And the returns will only get better as time goes by.
Our modest suggestion is a good starting point to explore a &ldquo;lost&rdquo; inflation survival manual &mdash; now over 40 years old, and more relevant than ever.
Most of what follows is a reprise of a collaboration between myself and veteran financial publisher Addison Wiggin over a decade ago, circulated to a limited audience. It deserves a wider hearing &mdash; especially now.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Before You Buy Another Ounce of Gold or Silver, Do This
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The usual guidance to fight a rising cost of living is to buy precious metals. Which the late John Pugsley thought was a fine idea&hellip; but he preferred to attack the problem at the source.
Mr. Pugsley belonged to the first generation of &ldquo;hard money&rdquo; newsletter editors who made a splash during gold&rsquo;s epic run-up in the 1970s, along with other legends like Howard Ruff and Harry Browne.
But by 1980, gold was climbing down from an $800 high that wouldn&rsquo;t be seen again for 27 years. Pugsley refined his guidance in a pathbreaking book called The Alpha Strategy: The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Pugsley defined the Alpha Strategy as &ldquo;the first plan for any individual to protect his wealth.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Wealth,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;is made up of real things. It is hammers, lathes, shovels, typewriters, windows, doors, walls, pencils, shirts, shoes, rugs, apples, automobiles and bread. Wealth comprises all those things we use, enjoy and benefit from.&rdquo;
He urged readers to rethink the entire process of working for a living and preserving purchasing power: &ldquo;Instead of converting labor into money, money into investments, investments back into money and money into real goods once again, convert your surplus earnings directly into real goods. Simply stated, invest your savings in those real things that you will be consuming in the future. Save only real wealth.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Alpha Strategy entailed three levels&hellip;
<ol>
<li>Invest in production. If it&rsquo;s something you need to make a living &mdash; education, a skill set, tools &mdash; this takes priority over anything else.</li>
<li>Save consumables. This is the stuff you use on a day-to-day basis &mdash; razor blades, pasta, tires &mdash; if you use it up and it has a decent shelf life, it falls under Level 2.</li>
<li>Save real money. If after Level 2 you still have savings left, then you can put it into precious metals and other tangible assets.</li>
</ol>
Note well: The Alpha Strategy is not a &ldquo;prepper&rdquo; or &ldquo;survivalist&rdquo; plan for the end of civilization as we know it. You will not &mdash; indeed, should not &mdash; load up on No. 10 cans of Mountain House freeze-dried meals.
&ldquo;While you may choose to put away freeze-dried foods,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;remember that they do not fall within the definition of good savings assets&hellip; The Alpha Strategy is a means to protect purchasing power, and is not intended to be a means to defend against social collapse.&rdquo;
Although under present circumstances going into 2026, it can&rsquo;t hurt. Heh&hellip;
The best part about the Alpha Strategy is you can start with any amount of capital. &ldquo;If you have only $100, you can protect it completely against inflation and all investment risks by simply buying things now that you know you will have to buy next week, next month or next year. If you have $1,000 or $10,000, the same thing holds true.&rdquo;
Better yet, all your &ldquo;gains&rdquo; are tax-free.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Level 1: Invest in Production
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The greater the investment you make in education and tools, the more you will produce and the higher your income and standard of living will be,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote in The Alpha Strategy.
By education, he was careful not to specify a college degree. For purposes of the Alpha Strategy, education means &ldquo;the acquisition of knowledge that will enable you to produce a product or service that will be in demand by others.&rdquo; Or it might entail learning a second trade, in case your current skill set becomes obsolete.
Meanwhile, think of the tools you use to earn your living. &ldquo;Whether you are an accountant whose only tools are a calculator, an accounting pad and a pencil; a mechanic who uses wrenches, drills and hammers; or a manufacturer who needs warehouses, lathes, presses and automatic screw machines, the principle is the same.&rdquo;
OK, the accountant of 1980 undoubtedly had to spend money on ever-increasing amounts of computer power in the decades since, but you get the idea: If it&rsquo;s something that won&rsquo;t go out of date quickly, stock up before prices rise any further.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Level 2: Save Consumables
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />On to Level 2: &ldquo;Once you have invested as much of your available capital as you can in education, tools, supplies and facilities for production, the next logical place to put your savings is into those goods that you and your family will consume in future years,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote.
Whether it&rsquo;s toothpaste, light bulbs or antifreeze, goods that have a long shelf life and won&rsquo;t become obsolete before you use them are all fair game for the Alpha Strategy.
It might sound daunting at first. But it&rsquo;s much easier to accomplish now than when The Alpha Strategy was published. Then, Pugsley had several pages of advice about how to dicker with retailers to get bulk discounts and how to seek out wholesale suppliers. In the age of the internet and wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam&rsquo;s, you don&rsquo;t need to resort to such measures.
So&hellip; let&rsquo;s run down a shopping list.
Food: &ldquo;Foods are the No. 1 consumption item for most of us,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;but because of their perishable nature, they must be carefully selected.&rdquo; So forget about meat and produce. Even with a freezer, &ldquo;the storage cost is high relative to other goods.&rdquo; Consider instead&hellip;
<blockquote>Canned goods: Shelf life varies, but figure on using them up within 18 months. Even a one-year supply will insulate you against rising prices</blockquote>
<blockquote>Sugars: The shelf life of sugar is just on this side of forever. &ldquo;Jams, jellies and other preserves will last indefinitely, as will most fruits that are packed in sugar syrups.&rdquo; Honey and molasses will keep for years; even if they harden, just heat and stir</blockquote>
<blockquote>Grains and legumes: Wheat, rice, peas and beans will all last for 10 years or longer. Beware: If you grind the wheat into flour, that shelf life turns into mere months</blockquote>
<blockquote>Tea: A &ldquo;near perfect&rdquo; savings asset, Pugsley said. Bulk buying gives you significant savings, and tea takes up little space and suffers little if any loss of quality over time</blockquote>
<blockquote>Pasta: It can keep for five years or longer.</blockquote>
Coffee? At the time Pugsley wrote the book, debate raged over its shelf life. A casual search of the internet today reveals that&rsquo;s still the case. You might want to experiment.
Health and beauty aids: &ldquo;Items such as deodorant, shampoo and toothpaste will keep indefinitely when stored in a cool, dry place, and mouthwash will keep up to three years under these same conditions&hellip; Don&rsquo;t forget razor blades, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, combs, brushes and first-aid supplies.&rdquo;
Cleaning supplies: Depending on their chemical makeup, not all detergents will last indefinitely. &ldquo;The best Alpha items in the cleaning equipment category are brushes, brooms, mops, vacuum bags, pot scrubbers, trash bags, compactor bags, sponges and scouring pads.&rdquo;
Paper products: Yes, they last forever as long as they&rsquo;re not exposed to light, bugs or mice. But there&rsquo;s a catch: &ldquo;The biggest drawback to some of these goods is their low cost per cubic foot, as this makes them costly to store.&rdquo; More about this shortly&hellip;
Clothing: Yes, fashions change. But men in particular could easily load up on 10 or 20 years&rsquo; worth of socks, underwear and T-shirts.
Automotive: &ldquo;Storage space and styling taken into account,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;you may decide to buy an extra new car this year and put it up on blocks.&rdquo; Five years on, you might be very satisfied with the purchase. If that&rsquo;s too out there, consider stockpiling replacement parts, motor oil and tires.
Around the house: Here too, spare parts for furnaces, water heaters and such might be useful. At the very least, consider small hardware items and garden supplies.
Wine: Pugsley was an oenophile, and he waxed eloquent about wine storage for four pages. &ldquo;The investment in a substantial personal wine cellar,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;offers the best of everything: low risk, protection against inflation, no taxes on the gain and an interesting and pleasurable avocation &mdash; in other words, it is the perfect asset for saving.&rdquo;
Don&rsquo;t take this up without some basic knowledge about which wines store well and which don&rsquo;t.
Also beware the temptation to deplete your stash faster than you expect: &ldquo;My first adventure into stockpiling,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;came when I bought what I thought would be a two&ndash;three-year supply of wine. The convenience of having it on hand each time we had a nice meal turned it into a one-year supply.&rdquo; Which defeats the purpose of keeping your cost of living low&hellip;
Most hard liquor, by the way, can last 10 years or more if you store it properly. Beer? Forget it.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Ah, but where do you keep everything? And how much room do you need in the first place?
&ldquo;The amount of room you need,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;will depend on the amount of money you have to invest and the type of goods you decide to stockpile.&rdquo;
A helpful tool is to figure the cost of an item relative to the amount of space it takes up, the value per cubic foot. This is why we encouraged you at the start of today&rsquo;s 5 Bullets to stock up on razor blades &mdash; a large supply takes up little space &mdash; so you wouldn&rsquo;t find the idea intimidating!
Here&rsquo;s a table taken straight from The Alpha Strategy. The dollar amounts are vastly out of date, but they&rsquo;ll get you thinking about which items give you the most bang for your buck if you have limited space.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1RhvpxgIqsshRiOMbsRZh0/cc38174f6e9408c93a3d144ef12986d4/StorageCosts.png" alt="Chart" />
At 1980 prices, Pugsley reckoned the average value per cubic foot of the goods you&rsquo;d store would be $25. Thus, a $10,000 stockpile would require 400 cubic feet of space. &ldquo;It could be kept in a space 4 feet deep by 7 feet high by 14 feet long, or roughly a 4-foot-deep storage area built along the wall of your garage.&rdquo; That said, a garage might not be the ideal choice, he said: You want a space that&rsquo;s cool, dark and dry.
Don&rsquo;t forget to think about insurance if loss of the goods would affect your standard of living for the worse.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Level 3 (Save Real Money)... and Beyond
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Then you get to Level 3 &mdash; saving real money.
Still have some cash left after building up your stash? &ldquo;You are ready to explore the third level of the strategy: the accumulation of real goods that you can eventually sell or exchange.&rdquo;
Pugsley&rsquo;s preferred vehicles were raw commodities. Granted, pork bellies and barrels of oil are problematic&hellip; so he leaned mostly toward metals, and not only the precious variety. &ldquo;Copper, zinc, lead, tin, nickel and aluminum are all metals that can be stockpiled, are universally used and can be expected to be in demand for centuries to come.&rdquo;
Forty-five years later, his words take on new relevance as copper and other base metals will be essential to the buildout of the power grid to accommodate AI.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Eager to explore more? It&rsquo;s easy.
Late in his life &mdash; he died in 2011 at age 77 &mdash; Mr. Pugsley posted a free PDF file of The Alpha Strategy on his website. And while his site is long gone, fans dutifully reposted the PDF. <a href="https://zombieprepdotnet.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/book2-preface.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here&rsquo;s a link.</a>
If you prefer a real book in your hands, used copies abound on Amazon and AbeBooks. Figure on shelling out a little under $15. Note well: Only the real book contains an appendix listing the shelf lives of literally hundreds of consumer goods.
The sooner you start, the sooner the strategy will begin paying off. No better place to start, either, than those razor blades.

shutterstock 2224376361

The Affordability Grinch

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />2025 Report Card
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It was perhaps our team&rsquo;s most out-there forecast for 2025 &mdash; and it was a banger.
Welcome to the Paradigm Press 2025 report card. We&rsquo;ll evaluate some of our team&rsquo;s top forecasts &mdash; the ones that panned out, and the ones that fell short.
During a gathering at our firm&rsquo;s Baltimore headquarters a year ago, the newest addition to our team &mdash; trading pro Enrique Abeyta &mdash; turned heads when he said AI darling Nvidia would shed $1 trillion in market cap sometime during 2025. Or at the latest, the first half of 2026.
His forecast came with 150 years of history and data behind it, and a dozen market cycles. The best analogy, he said, was that of Amazon during the dot-com bust from 2000&ndash;2002.
It didn&rsquo;t take long for Enrique&rsquo;s forecast to start coming to fruition. First, CEO Jensen Huang gave an underwhelming presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Then came the bombshell of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI engine that achieved stupendous results at little cost.
NVDA&rsquo;s market cap sank from a peak of $3.7 trillion on January 3 to $2.7 trillion by early March &mdash; ultimately sinking to $2.3 trillion in early April.
Enrique also forecast that NVDA shares would bounce back from those losses. Sure enough, from those April lows NVDA more than doubled to a $5 trillion market cap by the end of October. (Today? It&rsquo;s more like $4.25 trillion, up 28.8% year-to-date.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Trump will immediately open up federal lands to new permits for oil and natural gas exploration,&rdquo; Jim Rickards forecast in this space <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/power-to-the-people-trumps-energy-agenda" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the first business day of 2025</a>.
The move was key to what Jim saw as a three-pronged energy plan &mdash; &ldquo;the implementation of &lsquo;drill, baby, drill&rsquo; energy policies, the end of the Green New Deal programs and changes in the current climate agenda.&rdquo;
Within a few weeks, Jim&rsquo;s forecast evolved into his &ldquo;American Birthright&rdquo; thesis &mdash; an aggressive plan by the Trump White House to unlock the energy and mineral bounty beneath federal lands, valued as high as $150 trillion.
In time, the Trump administration&rsquo;s strategy developed into one in which the federal government took ownership stakes in mining companies. Several Paradigm editors followed Jim&rsquo;s &ldquo;Birthright&rdquo; cue with a recommendation of the rare-earth firm MP Materials. Members of Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha profited the most &mdash; $918% playing MP call options.
This is one trend where there will be many more profit opportunities during 2026. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Along the same lines as Jim&rsquo;s American Birthright thesis, Ray Blanco anticipated the Trump administration&rsquo;s launch of a &ldquo;National Strategic Computing Reserve&rdquo; &mdash; not unlike the government&rsquo;s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ray said it would aim to ensure the United States is the world leader not only in AI but in the next generation of digital technology &mdash; quantum computing.
Further, he said the guts of a National Strategic Computing Reserve are already in place, thanks to a Biden administration initiative in 2021 that aimed to harness computer power to track the progress of COVID and other viruses.
And with figures like Elon Musk, David Sacks and Marc Andreessen in Trump&rsquo;s circle, Ray believed it would become a newsmaking force in 2025 comparable to the space program in the 1960s.
It didn&rsquo;t pan out exactly that way. But the administration has made clear it seeks to &ldquo;win the AI race&rdquo; with China. Among the steps it&rsquo;s taken in that regard is Uncle Sam acquiring a 10% stake in Intel.
INTC is a company that conventional wisdom had left for dead &mdash; but that Ray and several other Paradigm editors championed going into 2025. Sure enough, it&rsquo;s up 79.6% year-to-date.
Our 2025 report card continues in Bullet No. 2&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />2025 Report Card, Continued
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;We're witnessing something truly historic &mdash; the birth of machines that can actually think and reason,&rdquo; said James Altucher in this space <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-shows-its-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the second business day of 2025.</a>
&ldquo;This isn't just about computers getting faster or smarter. This is about machines developing real problem-solving abilities.&rdquo;
No, that&rsquo;s not the same thing as AI becoming self-aware and bossing you around. &ldquo;Think of it like teaching a child to solve 247 + 385,&rdquo; said James. &ldquo;Instead of just guessing, they learn to add the ones column first, then the tens, then the hundreds.
&ldquo;Previous AI models often struggled with complex problems because they tried to solve everything at once. These new models are different. They take their time, think things through and explain their reasoning along the way.&rdquo;
James said the companies successfully harnessing this technology could &ldquo;create generational wealth for their shareholders.&rdquo;
That includes the aforementioned NVDA &mdash; a core holding in the Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network portfolio, up 288% from the newsletter&rsquo;s initial recommendation in September 2023.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner entered 2025 conscious of the fact the typical bull market runs about 5&frac12; years &mdash; and the current one began in October 2022.
That&rsquo;s based on market data going back to 1950. Using that rule of thumb, the bull could run until early 2028.
Sure enough, the S&amp;P 500 is on track to register three straight years of double-digit percentage gains.
That said, Greg warned at the start of the year that we were overdue for a 10% pullback. &ldquo;Be on the lookout, even in the first half of 2025, for the S&amp;P 500 to drop 10%.&rdquo;
Bingo. From a high of 6,144 in mid-February, the S&amp;P slid throughout March &mdash; then plunged in April after the president&rsquo;s &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; tariff announcement. The index bottomed on April 8 at 4,982 &mdash; a swoon of 18.9%.
Alas, Greg will be the first to admit he whiffed on his projected Bitcoin price of $279,000. Can&rsquo;t win &lsquo;em all.
We&rsquo;d be remiss if we didn&rsquo;t subject one of your editor&rsquo;s own forecasts for scrutiny. That&rsquo;s next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Progress Report on 3-3-3
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Ahead of Trump&rsquo;s inauguration in January, the financial media were playing up the &ldquo;3-3-3&rdquo; agenda of incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent set the following goals&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Cutting the federal budget deficit to an amount that&rsquo;s 3% of GDP</li>
<li>3% GDP growth by the final year of Trump&rsquo;s term</li>
<li>Growth in energy production equivalent to 3 million barrels of oil per day.</li>
</ul>
Those goals sound rather wonkish &mdash; but the broad idea is to juice economic growth to a point that it generates sufficient tax revenue so Uncle Sam&rsquo;s gargantuan debt load becomes more manageable.
With the proviso that we&rsquo;re not even 12 months into the Trump 47 presidency, let&rsquo;s see where things stand on each plank of the 3-3-3 plan&hellip;
<ul>
<li>As Trump prepared to take office a second time, the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP stood at shockingly high levels outside of wartime, a financial crisis or a pandemic &mdash; 6.3% in fiscal year 2024. For fiscal year 2025, that figure was trimmed slightly to 6.0%. Still high by historical standards, and there&rsquo;s a lot of work to do to get to 3%</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>As it happens, the Commerce Department reported third-quarter GDP this morning, behind schedule because of the government shutdown. &ldquo;The data show the economy growing at an average annual rate of 2.5% since Trump returned to office,&rdquo; says The Wall Street Journal, &ldquo;even after a first-quarter contraction as companies ramped up imports to get ahead of new tariffs.&rdquo; Going forward, 3% is achievable &mdash; but a lot has to go right. (And even if it does, GDP is a statistical abstraction that has little to do with your own prosperity)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Measuring the growth in energy production is a challenge because Bessent&rsquo;s yardstick is &ldquo;barrels of oil equivalent&rdquo; including both oil and natural gas. But oil production alone did grow almost half a million barrels a day in 2025. From the get-go, this was the most achievable of Bessent&rsquo;s goals.</li>
</ul>
On Jan. 15, I wrote that 3-3-3 is &ldquo;a variation on the same old playbook that&rsquo;s never worked.&rdquo;
Without a plan to slash federal spending &mdash; and I was already on record skeptical that DOGE would accomplish anything &mdash; the plan was doomed to failure.
I didn&rsquo;t outright forecast that 3-3-3 would be a bust in calendar year 2025 &mdash; especially since Bessent&rsquo;s goals were for the duration of the Trump 47 administration.
But everything hinges on the first element of the plan. The budget deficit as a percentage of the economy has to get out of crisis-era levels and back to something approximating &ldquo;normal.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;re nowhere near there yet. And we&rsquo;ll never get there unless the White House and Congress take a chainsaw to federal spending.
And how likely is that?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Silver $70
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Silver is making a run for $70 &mdash; only two weeks after breaking above $60 for the first time.
Actually the white metal broke above $70 as the sun rose over the East Coast &mdash; only to take a tumble after the release of the aforementioned GDP numbers.
(Apparently the theory is that because the numbers are &ldquo;better than expected&rdquo; the Federal Reserve is less likely to cut short-term interest rates during its next meeting at the end of January. Literally no one is going to remember this by the time we get to the end of January.)
But at last check the bid has poked its nose over $70 again. Overbought markets can stay overbought longer than you expect.
Gold is also in record territory at $4,459. But the HUI index of mining stocks is in the red &mdash; down nearly half a percent at 737.
Meanwhile, copper is also setting records today &mdash; over $12,000 per metric ton. It&rsquo;s up 37% year-to-date. Congratulations are in order for Rickards&rsquo; Insider Intel readers who collected 50% gains yesterday playing options on the big copper producer Freeport-McMoRan.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />At the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is inching its way back toward a record.
At last check, the index is up a quarter percent on the day, resting at 6,895 &mdash; only five points away from its Dec. 11 record. The Dow and the Nasdaq are likewise registering modest gains.
Crude sits a little under $58&hellip; Bitcoin just under $88,000&hellip; Ethereum at $2,954.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Gold Myth-Busting
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The following meme is catching fire on social media&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/32UteNYvB6jFC5ALkc5Ptz/9346fb08a8fa502032bd97662fbb9ea9/gold_meme.jpg" alt="Gold Meme" />
The caption is mostly accurate. Individuals could still retain up to five ounces of gold bullion in their personal possession. But yes, the dollar was instantly devalued relative to gold by 45%.
The photo itself looks&hellip; too perfect. Probably AI generated. An image search on Google for &ldquo;&lsquo;turn in your gold&rsquo; photo 1933&rdquo; turns up only one result and it&rsquo;s accompanied by the same caption and it was posted to the web only yesterday.
(Granted, Google search is nigh-useless anymore &mdash; but it&rsquo;s probably reliable in this instance.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The faux photo belies this reality: Most Americans voluntarily surrendered their gold years before FDR&rsquo;s order in 1933.
People didn&rsquo;t have to line up at the bank &mdash; and FDR did not send G-men door-to-door.
Instead, people had been conditioned over the previous couple of decades to use convenient &ldquo;gold certificates&rdquo; instead of gold coins.
As Jim Rickards explained it here in 2016, &ldquo;Banks slowly took the coins out of circulation (the way cash is going out of circulation today), melted them down and recast them into 400-ounce bars. Nobody is going to walk around with a 400-ounce bar in her pocket.
&ldquo;Then they said to people, in effect, &lsquo;OK. You can own gold, but it&rsquo;s not going to be in the form of coins anymore. It&rsquo;s going to be in the form of these bars. By the way, these bars are very expensive.&rsquo; That meant you needed a lot of money to have even one bar, and you weren&rsquo;t going to take it anywhere. You were going to leave it in a bank vault.&rdquo;
Americans were lured down the garden path with the promise of convenience. Why lug around those $5, $10 and $20 gold coins when you had those handy paper &ldquo;gold certificates&rdquo;?
Now you know.
The &ldquo;photo&rdquo; is certainly eye-catching. But it has nothing to do with the reality of how FDR executed his fiendish scheme&hellip;

fmf hero 122325

2025 Report Card

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Gold Breaks the Rules
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gold begins a new week making up for lost time &mdash; up nearly 2% and in record territory over $4,400.
No, there&rsquo;s no obvious catalyst. It&rsquo;s just what happens when any asset class is in a bull market. It acquires a momentum all its own.
In recent weeks it&rsquo;s been silver stealing all the precious-metals thunder. But gold is the foundation and the framework.
Silver, platinum, palladium and the mining stocks can deliver life-changing wealth when they get on the rally tracks &mdash; but that doesn&rsquo;t happen without a movement into gold.
What&rsquo;s behind gold&rsquo;s 70% year-to-date appreciation? And where does it go from here?
Some insight comes from economic historian Edward Chancellor in a recent opinion piece published by the Reuters newswire&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;By the turn of this decade it had become received wisdom that gold moves inversely with long-term real interest rates,&rdquo; Chancellor writes.
In other words, gold rises when real (or after-inflation) interest rates fall. And by the same token, gold falls as real rates rise.
&ldquo;Thus its value swooned in 2022,&rdquo; Chancellor explains, &ldquo;when central banks tightened the cost of borrowing and bond yields climbed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Then something unexpected happened: Gold started to rise exponentially even as inflation turned down and inflation-adjusted bond yields rose.&rdquo;
Gold slid from $2,000 to nearly $1,600 in 2022 &mdash; only to begin an ascent that&rsquo;s still underway, even as long-term bond yields adjusted for inflation are also rising.
In other words, gold is breaking the rules.
Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards says this is a huge development: &ldquo;This decoupling of gold prices and real yields means gold can continue to go up in diverse interest rate environments.&rdquo;
What changed?
Maybe you&rsquo;ve already guessed if you&rsquo;ve been keeping up with these daily missives: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Washington responded with unprecedented sanctions &mdash; freezing the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank, some $300 billion worth.
&ldquo;The seizure of U.S. Treasury securities owned by Russia has caused large reserve holders like China, Japan and Saudi Arabia to ask if the same thing could happen to them,&rdquo; Jim goes on. &ldquo;The simple solution is to buy physical gold since it is not a currency and is not easy to freeze or seize.
&ldquo;Central banks moved from being net sellers to net buyers in 2010. That buying trend is continuing and getting larger.&rdquo;
Here again is a chart we can&rsquo;t show you often enough. Look how everything changed in 2022. And the 2025 number is for only the first three quarters of the year&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
This phenomenon &ldquo;puts a de facto floor under the price of gold,&rdquo; says Jim &mdash; &ldquo;because central banks will buy the dips to keep expanding their positions.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But central bank buying isn&rsquo;t the only factor propelling gold higher.
&ldquo;Holdings of gold by ETFs, a kind of proxy for retail interest, have been lagging the price action,&rdquo; Jim goes on. &ldquo;This means the ETFs are poised to expand their share issuance and gold purchases in the near future.
&ldquo;Above all, private institutional investors have gold allocations of below 2.0% of total assets. If that expanded to a mere 4.0% allocation, there&rsquo;s not enough gold in the world at today&rsquo;s prices to fill those orders.
&ldquo;That dynamic alone could send gold prices above $10,000 per ounce in the year ahead.&rdquo;
Understand, that&rsquo;s not a forecast per se. It&rsquo;s an extrapolation of current trends &mdash; and a recognition that nothing is getting in the way of those trends. If $10,000 doesn&rsquo;t happen in 2026&hellip; it won&rsquo;t be much beyond 2026.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, silver powered another $2 higher overnight &mdash; surpassing $69 before pulling back a bit.
Yes, silver has gotten ahead of itself. But assets that get ahead of themselves frequently rally much higher before taking a rest. &ldquo;Its next target is $78.50,&rdquo; comments Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening &mdash; &ldquo;and it may get there sooner rather than later.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About the Santa Claus Rally&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The stock market begins the new week where the old one left off &mdash; with a rally. But don&rsquo;t call it a &ldquo;Santa Claus rally&rdquo; yet.
&ldquo;Many investors are often confused about how the Santa Claus rally works, and when it actually takes place,&rdquo; says Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner.
It&rsquo;s not just a general year-end uptrend. The term was coined in 1972 by Yale Hirsch, longtime editor of the Stock Trader&rsquo;s Almanac &mdash; and he gave it a very specific definition. A Santa Claus rally covers the last five trading days of the year, and the first two of the following year.
With that in mind, &ldquo;The Santa Claus rally officially kicks off this Wednesday and runs through Monday, Jan. 5,&rdquo; Greg says.
&ldquo;So far, stocks are holding their gains today. A fitting end to 2025 and the past two months of choppy conditions starts now.&rdquo;
Checking our screens, the S&amp;P 500 is up nearly two-thirds of a percent to 6,876 &mdash; about 25 points off the index&rsquo;s record close back on Dec. 11. Curiously the S&amp;P&rsquo;s gains are a bit stronger than both the Dow and the Nasdaq &mdash; which are both in the green by a little over a half percent.
As for crypto, &ldquo;Bitcoin and Ethereum have been dead trades for the better part of the past two months,&rdquo; says Greg. But we&rsquo;re beginning to see signs of life following a nice Friday rally.
&ldquo;Bitcoin is moving toward $90K and is up more than 1.5% today while Ethereum is solidly above $3K.
&ldquo;Yes, there&rsquo;s still a ton of work left to do for the big coins. But every rally has to start somewhere. We&rsquo;ll see if they can continue their comeback moves into the short trading week.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Tanker Wars
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Intentionally or not, the Trump administration is picking a fight with the Chinese government over the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan-linked oil tankers.
It started on Dec. 10 when U.S. forces seized a tanker off the Venezuelan coast and escorted it to Houston.
Then last Tuesday night, Donald Trump declared &ldquo;a total and complete blockade&rdquo; of all &ldquo;sanctioned oil tankers&rdquo; entering or leaving Venezuela.
As we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/taco-or-world-war-iii" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on Wednesday</a>, Moscow immediately called Trump&rsquo;s bluff &mdash; when a sanctioned Russian-owned vessel, the Hyperion, began approaching Venezuela with a cargo of oil-processing chemicals.
According to ship-tracking data, the Hyperion arrived yesterday at the Venezuelan port of Amuay.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But while the Russian-owned vessel went on its way unmolested, U.S. forces seized a Chinese-owned vessel on Saturday.
This is an oil tanker called the Centuries. The ship itself is not under U.S. sanctions but apparently the cargo is. The New York Times reports the ship was carrying Venezuelan oil en route to Chinese refineries. Further, unlike the first seizure earlier this month, this time there was no seizure warrant from the Justice Department to take possession of the ship.
And with that, Chinese state media unleashed its full fury on Washington.
&ldquo;The U.S. now faces another major strategic choice,&rdquo; says an article in the Global Times &mdash; drawing on a Chinese proverb.
&ldquo;History has repeatedly demonstrated that &lsquo;a just cause rallies abundant support while an unjust one finds little.&rsquo; Only mutual respect and equality can bring lasting peace and development, which aligns with the common interests of all countries, including the long-term well-being of the American people."
Yes, Global Times is a Communist Party mouthpiece &mdash; but it&rsquo;s not wrong.
In fact, on second thought maybe the second ship seizure this weekend is what&rsquo;s propelling the gold price higher.
That is, it&rsquo;s another no-confidence vote in Washington&rsquo;s efforts to be &mdash; as France&rsquo;s finance minister put it a few years back &mdash; &ldquo;the economic policeman of the planet.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For sure, the oil price popped big-time as markets reopened Sunday night. At last check a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over 2% to $57.77.
As the day wears on, it appears U.S. forces tried to seize a third vessel but then gave up the pursuit. The Bella 1 was on its way to Venezuela to load a shipment of crude before turning tail back into the Atlantic.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Bud for Boomers
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Volatility in cannabis stocks notwithstanding, cannabis use among older Americans is on the rise.
In our Saturday edition, Emily told you about Donald Trump&rsquo;s executive order downgrading marijuana from a Schedule I drug (on par with LSD and heroin) to Schedule III (comparable to codeine and ketamine).
In anticipation of the order, cannabis stocks rallied hard last week &mdash; only to collapse once it was apparent that the cannabis industry still would not get access to the banking system.
Still, the long-term growth trajectory is intact. Figures from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2024 find 10% of Americans 65 and older reported using the herb at least once a year. That&rsquo;s up from only 0.3% in the early 2000s.
Which makes sense when you think about it. &ldquo;In the early 2000s, the 65-plus age bracket was comprised of the GI and Silent generations. These two groups were never known for their drug use,&rdquo; write demographers Neil Howe and Christian Ford at their Demography Unplugged Substack.
&ldquo;But over the last 25 years, the 65-plus bracket has become mostly comprised of boomers. And this Deadhead cohort has brought their weed habits with them into older age brackets.
&ldquo;Expanded access has also played an important role. Recreational marijuana is now legal in 24 states, while medical marijuana is legal in 40. As a result, just over half of Americans live in a county with at least one marijuana dispensary.&rdquo;
Paradigm tech-and-biotech specialist Ray Blanco guided readers to some of the earliest profits to be had in publicly traded canna-businesses in 2016&ndash;17.
He has his eye out for the next wave in the aftermath of Trump&rsquo;s order. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Free Pass for Big Pharma
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/baby-formula-blackmail" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a> about Abbott Laboratories&rsquo; threat to pull baby formula off the market unless Congress gives it liability protection prompted a couple of responses&hellip;
&ldquo;Re your comment, &lsquo;If the studies and authorities say there&rsquo;s nothing to back up a link between the formula and necrotizing enterocolitis, rely on those studies and authorities in court and let the chips fall where they may. You shouldn&rsquo;t need special favors from Washington.&rsquo;
&ldquo;If only it were that simple! Shopping for the right judge and the right venue doesn&rsquo;t happen just in politics. Evidence allowed to be presented in court may bear little resemblance to what a typical person would perceive as facts, especially when scientific or technical data are involved.
&ldquo;In the absence of tort reform needed for product liability, how can you blame a company like Abbott from seeking alternate ways to level the playing field? Shouldn't they be making the best business decisions they can for their shareholders?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The real problem is when someone can get a $500 million judgement against a provider for a bad outcome because the product designed to cure that fatal disease failed to do so,&rdquo; writes a reader who evidently is a medical professional.
&ldquo;Most preemies die without intense medical intervention. The logical business solution is to quit trying to save them and stop making the product. If the help-to-harm ratio is high, as your data suggests, every effort to keep helping is reasonable.
&ldquo;I look for NEC on every preemie X-ray that is taken. It is hard to identify early. I am not in a position to know what the treatment is and how often it is successful.
&ldquo;I have been sued twice because of bad outcomes. First one there was no payment. It was clear the patient was responsible for his own demise. Second was extremely sad. Pulled at your heartstrings. Full-term baby on formula got severe complications of NEC. Pediatrician and neonatologist took big monetary hits. NO ONE DID ANYTHING WRONG!&rdquo;
Dave responds: To be sure, my critique didn&rsquo;t make allowances for the America-as-a-litigious-society problem.
But I don&rsquo;t think the answer to that problem is to give Big Pharma free passes of the sort it got for the COVID jabs&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The mailbag thread about the Vietnam War is carrying into a new week&hellip;
&ldquo;So my girlfriend is a refugee from this country,&rdquo; a reader writes. &ldquo;She was caught trying to escape multiple times by the communists and some of her family were killed by them.
&ldquo;A friend of mine who fought in the war also said we were indeed winning and could have won the war. He had many crazy stories like being shoved into the luggage space of a Huey gunship to get airlifted out and the hatch would not completely shut. He said the number of political grifters such as LBJ owning stock in Sea-Land etc. was common.
&ldquo;The people in this country must make laws such as it being mandatory for the families of all politicians to fight in these wars, that they cannot trade stocks during their tenure and any evidence of familial inside trading will result in prison time, etc.
&ldquo;Until things like this are enacted and enforced the U.S. is doomed to die.&rdquo;
Dave: The timing of your note&rsquo;s arrival couldn&rsquo;t be more pitch-perfect&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6j7fhOdeNzqqFW8MPIuAAq/d3026167ed97437f05f6c70ed4b76518/mel_tweet.png" alt="Tweet" />

fmf hero 122225

Gold Breaks the Rules 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Baby Formula Blackmail
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Aries-Reign Peterson lived for only 79 days.
Born premature on Jan. 30, 2018, he got by on breast milk at the start &mdash; &ldquo;thriving and growing for several weeks,&rdquo; recalls his mother, Anika Hunte.
According to a lawsuit filed by Hunte against Abbott Laboratories (ABT), the boy&rsquo;s health started going downhill as soon as he was given a formulation of Similac made specifically for preemies. And it got worse after doctors added a Similac fortifier.
Then came the diagnosis: Necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC &mdash; an inflammation of the intestinal tissue, a condition that kills on average one premature baby every day in the United States. Aries-Reign went on life support and died on April 18.
Hunte&rsquo;s lawsuit is among hundreds now making their way through the courts &mdash; all of them alleging that Abbott&rsquo;s preemie version of Similac raises the likelihood of NEC. One of those cases resulted last year in a $500 million judgment against Abbott.
In response, Abbott has gone to Capitol Hill &ldquo;to press for a law that would throw out all pending suits and shield it from any future ones,&rdquo; according to an infuriating Bloomberg article.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Here&rsquo;s the plot twist: Abbott says if Congress doesn&rsquo;t accede to its wishes, it will pull the Similac preemie formula off the market.
Alternatively, Abbott is proposing the federal government take over sales and distribution of the product.
It&rsquo;s an odd tack to take given the company&rsquo;s insistence there&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the product.
&ldquo;Numerous studies and NEC authorities have made clear that preterm infant formula does not cause NEC,&rdquo; says a statement given to Bloomberg by Abbott PR flack Scott Stoffel. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the absence of human milk that increases NEC risk rather than anything harmful in formula &mdash; a product that&rsquo;s been helping infants thrive and survive for nearly 50 years.&rdquo;
Fine. If the studies and authorities say there&rsquo;s nothing to back up a link between the formula and NEC, rely on those studies and authorities in court and let the chips fall where they may. You shouldn&rsquo;t need special favors from Washington.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Make no mistake: What Abbott wants is the same sort of sweetheart deal the makers of the COVID jabs got.
Weeks before the first lockdowns in March 2020, the feds invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005 &mdash; offering a liability shield against any developers of a future COVID shot.
&ldquo;For the next four years,&rdquo; said a CNBC article in December 2020, &ldquo;these companies &lsquo;cannot be sued for money damages in court&rsquo; over injuries related to the administration or use of products to treat or protect against COVID.&rdquo;
That was during the first Trump administration. A year ago, on its way out the door, the Biden administration extended those protections through 2029.
Yes, there&rsquo;s a government-instituted compensation fund &mdash; but getting money out of it is like getting the proverbial blood from a stone.
Per Bloomberg, Abbott&rsquo;s lobbyists &ldquo;are pushing for a similar fund that would give a payout to people who claim harm from its products, but would bar them from suing Abbott in court, according to a one-pager the company has given congressional staff.&rdquo;
The liability shield made its way through a House committee during the summer, but its future is murky.
No, there&rsquo;s no obvious investment angle here. ABT shares have gone nowhere this year; they don&rsquo;t look attractive either on the long or short side.
As an old colleague once said, sometimes we go in search of new investment ideas &mdash; and all we find instead is outrage.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Every Time This Happens, the Market Rallies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The recent action by the Federal Reserve to cut their benchmark fed funds rate with the S&amp;P 500 near all-time highs is relatively rare,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Indeed it&rsquo;s happened only 10 times since 1994. &ldquo;One year later the stock market has been up 100% of the time!&rdquo; he says. And per figures from Bespoke Investment Group, the average gain is 14.9%
Curiously, eight of these 10 instances have occurred under the current Fed chair Jerome Powell. &ldquo;The other two,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;were under Alan Greenspan during the last technology bubble&rdquo; in the 1990s.
Historical data like this affirms Enrique&rsquo;s position that the AI boom is destined to end badly &mdash; but not yet!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, it&rsquo;s one of those four days each year when weirdness can ripple through the stock market.
It&rsquo;s a &ldquo;quadruple witching&rdquo; Friday, when four types of derivatives all expire at once &mdash; stock options, stock futures, index options and index futures.
But there&rsquo;s no evidence of weirdness at the moment. At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.9% on the day at 6,835. The Dow&rsquo;s rally is weaker, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s stronger.
In the commodity complex, silver is on track to end the week in record territory, the bid currently $67.21. Big brother gold is also looking stout at $4,350 although it hasn&rsquo;t experienced the furious run-up that silver has in recent days. Crude is up 41 cents to $56.56.
The major cryptos are treading water, Bitcoin a little over $87,000 and Ethereum at $2,961.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />TikTok: The Final Chapter
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It appears the TikTok deal is nearly across the finish line.
As mentioned here on Wednesday, the Trump administration has issued repeated extensions of the deadline set out by federal law for TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners to either sell to American buyers &mdash; or shut the platform down.
Yesterday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sent a memo to his staff: Parent firm ByteDance has signed binding agreements with a group of buyers.
Per the memo, the new ownership lineup looks like this&hellip;
<ul>
<li>ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake</li>
<li>Oracle (ORCL) will own 15%</li>
<li>The U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake will own 15%</li>
<li>MGX, an investment fund owned by the United Arab Emirates government, will own 15%</li>
<li>The remaining 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors.</li>
</ul>
Presumably that latter category includes Pennsylvania billionaire and GOP donor Jeff Yass.
Under the old ownership structure, he owned 7% of TikTok parent ByteDance. By many accounts he persuaded Donald Trump to oppose the TikTok ban when it was rushed through Congress in the spring of last year.
Perhaps in the fullness of time it will emerge that Yass was the glue on the TikTok deal &mdash; which is set to be concluded on Jan. 22.
Before we close the book on this story, it&rsquo;s worth briefly revisiting a couple of angles discussed in this space at the time the TikTok ban was moving through Congress last year&hellip;
First, the law grants sweeping powers to the president to ban apps and websites that he determines to be controlled by a &ldquo;foreign adversary&rdquo; &mdash; not just TikTok.
Donald Trump&rsquo;s future AI-and-crypto czar warned as much at the time.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47OqFW6FVqpknTyvh1GlvC/b35c4552203a281317895017749c39a7/david_sacks_x.png" alt="David Sacks X" />
Second, the number of new TikTok users plateaued roughly two years ago. And most of those new users are folks in their 30s and 40s.
Perhaps Larry Ellison &mdash; the Oracle co-founder who&rsquo;s been the &ldquo;face&rdquo; of this deal &mdash; will come to regret his acquisition?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Because it appears the Trump administration is still enamored with the idea of a 50-year mortgage&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2wHuGSpgW684YaRZkWmnZ7/dc8d75787c13415c193a6553b92d8bad/50yr_mortgage_meme.png" alt="meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Second Jobs, &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We heard from a handful of readers after our item <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/taco-or-world-war-iii" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a> about a record number of Americans working second and third jobs. 
&ldquo;Our family employs college students with primary school education focus (preschool, kindergarten, early grade school) as babysitters for our young boys.
&ldquo;Many of them stay on and help with our family (or with others) even after graduating with a full-time teaching position because the salary isn&rsquo;t enough to make ends meet. These young teachers earn $35,000&ndash;45,000/year and they have to pay for their own school supplies, travel, etc&hellip;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a demanding job, underpaid and underappreciated and most have to take on a second job tutoring, babysitter, etc.&hellip; in order to survive.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;In the early &rsquo;60s the minimum wage for us high school graduates was $1.00 per hour,&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;To pay my way through college, I had to have as many as four part-time jobs during the school year and at least one extra part-time job plus a full-time job during the summer (refused to borrow money for college).
&ldquo;Since then inflation makes $1 per hour back then equivalent to about $13 today, which is still below the poverty level of about $17 today and why so many now work two jobs.
&ldquo;Easy to see why the birth rate is so low for married couples and why many singles are renting rooms from homeowners.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Still, for some people working more than one job is a choice.
&ldquo;I work as an insurance agent about 40&ndash;50 hours a week. This job more than covers our living expenses.
&ldquo;I also run 200-plus head of cattle mostly on the weekends. My wife and I have six rental properties as well.
&ldquo;My side hustle is grinding stumps on the side for spending money.
&ldquo;I enjoy the physical work outside the office, and it provides a nice additional source of income.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Dave's article about the 58-year hypothesis and its link to various historical events was very informative and insightful,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026">yesterday&rsquo;s &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo; edition of </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;From an English professor's perspective, Bravo! Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The section of the issue dealing with the Tet Offensive drew a couple of impassioned responses.
&ldquo;I get very tired of hearing that we lost the WAR with Vietnam; the Military did NOT lose the War; the politicians are the ones that lost the war. McNamara and his numbers math plus all the restrictions on what could be bombed was ridiculous.
&ldquo;How do I know? I was there in 1968 and flew 120 Reconnaissance missions in an RF-4C and had access to all the Top Secret information. Whether or not we should have even been in the war in the first place is another issue.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We did win Tet,&rdquo; says another, &ldquo;and had the NVA beat after Linebacker II, then gave it away in peace negotiation followed by Congress pulling the funding for our allies; 58,000 dead while many at home got rich and we created a great debt. They beat us because of TV, weak leadership and terrible war plans.&rdquo;
Dave responds: This isn&rsquo;t the first time I&rsquo;ve pointed it out, but there are interesting/disturbing parallels between Vietnam and Ukraine.
Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 in part by touting a &ldquo;secret plan&rdquo; to end the Vietnam War.
It turned out the plan was to fight the war for four more years&hellip; then send Henry Kissinger to Paris to sign a peace deal at the start of his second term that was no different than the one he could have gotten at the start of his first.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, promised to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict on &ldquo;Day 1&rdquo; of his presidency. Yet the war still rages, with a steady pipeline of U.S. aid to Kyiv and Trump threatening to amp up the sanctions on Moscow.
For the sake of young Ukrainians being sent into the meat grinder, let&rsquo;s hope this time the war isn&rsquo;t dragged out all the way until January 2029.

fmf hero 121925

Baby Formula Blackmail

fmf-hero-121825

The Boomer Freak-Out of 2026

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />TACO or WWIII
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Either the president will back down from his declaration of a blockade against Venezuela&hellip; or World War III starts this week.
It&rsquo;s one or the other.
As you might have heard, last night Donald Trump declared &ldquo;a total and complete blockade&rdquo; of all &ldquo;sanctioned oil tankers&rdquo; entering or leaving Venezuela.
&ldquo;Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,&rdquo; he said on his Truth Social platform. &ldquo;It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For decades, if not centuries, statesmen have looked upon a blockade as an act of war.
One of the things that made <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/doubling-down-on-armageddon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962</a> so dangerous was that President John F. Kennedy imposed a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.
But he was careful never to call it a &ldquo;blockade&rdquo; &mdash; knowing the nuclear-armed Soviet Union would see it as a declaration of war. (He used the euphemism &ldquo;quarantine&rdquo; instead.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Around the same time Trump declared the blockade last night, a sanctioned Russian oil tanker began approaching Venezuela.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6d4ZmzSW56tsD0sS0gehdZ/160313ef1adcc380a02f8c1a10dea696/dd_geopolitics_x.png" alt="Tweet" />
The Hyperion is called a &ldquo;shadow tanker&rdquo; because while it flies a Gambian flag &mdash; the better to evade U.S. sanctions &mdash; it appears to have substantial Russian ownership.
A U.S. attack on this ship would be a U.S. attack on Russia.
Your move, Mr. Trump.
For months now, financial observers have invoked the term TACO &mdash; short for &ldquo;Trump always chickens out.&rdquo; It seems Moscow just called his bluff&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile on the economic warfare front, the Trump administration is ready to impose yet another round of sanctions on Russia &ldquo;should President Vladimir Putin reject a peace agreement with Ukraine,&rdquo; according to a Bloomberg report.
It appears existing sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s &ldquo;shadow fleet&rdquo; would be stepped up &mdash; as well as sanctions on &ldquo;traders who facilitate the transactions.&rdquo; Bloomberg says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed the move last week with European diplomats.
Hmmm&hellip; Only last month, Bessent was being interviewed by Kristen Welker on NBC&rsquo;s Meet the Press &mdash; slamming the European Union for planning an additional round of sanctions on top of the 18 already imposed.
&ldquo;The Europeans tell me, &lsquo;Oh, we are doing our 19th sanctions package.&rsquo; In my mind, Kristen, if you're going to do something 19 times, you failed.&rdquo;
Perhaps American sanctions have some sort of magic pixie dust that European sanctions lack?
Yesterday, the price of oil sank to its lowest level since early 2021 on silly rumors that peace was about to break out between Russia and Ukraine. Today it&rsquo;s up nearly a buck to $56.10.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />DIS and AMZN and OpenAI
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />After Disney announced it would sink $1 billion into ChatGPT maker OpenAI last week, Amazon just said, &ldquo;Hold my beer.&rdquo;
We should back up a bit. Last week at the big annual gathering of the Paradigm editors at our Baltimore headquarters, trading pro Enrique Abeyta forecast what he called the &ldquo;OpenAIpocalypse.&rdquo;
Enrique has long thought that OpenAI&rsquo;s head honcho Sam Altman is all hat, no cattle. He thinks 2026 is the year it will all come crashing down &mdash; in catastrophic fashion. Enrique even compares OpenAI&rsquo;s likely fate to the collapse of Enron in 2001.
So&hellip; The big AI headline today is that Amazon is discussing a deal to invest $10 billion into OpenAI. In exchange, OpenAI would adopt Amazon&rsquo;s Trainium series of AI chips and use Amazon Web Services&rsquo; data center capacity. At least that&rsquo;s what the tech website The Information is reporting.
AMZN&rsquo;s reported $10 billion gambit comes on the heels of a mere $1 billion investment in OpenAI announced last week by The Walt Disney Company. Under the deal, ChatGPT users would get access to Disney and Marvel characters to create their own AI-generated images and videos.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Well, the devil is in the details,&rdquo; Enrique writes this morning on the daily-feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
&ldquo;Now it has come out that OpenAi is paying DIS not in cash, but with warrants to buy OpenAi stock.
&ldquo;Those are likely well in the money and Disney would only put the $1 billion investment in IF they were so &mdash; in fact &mdash; while Disney WOULD be investing $1 billion into OpenAi, they likely would be making much more money than that.
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the headlines!&rdquo;
The reality check is having zero impact on DIS stock this week &mdash; trading near a one-month high. Meanwhile AMZN is up three-quarters of a percent a day after its own OpenAI announcement. Go figure&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story once again today is&hellip; silver. The white metal is up $2.82 at last check &mdash; a whopping 4.4% &mdash; to $66.49.
&ldquo;Mr. Slammy&rdquo; &mdash; the mysterious forces in New York and London that can depress the silver price &mdash; is nowhere to be found today after another round of furious buying in Shanghai.
Gold, meanwhile, is tightening its grip on the $4,300 level &mdash; the bid now $4,338.
The major U.S. stock indexes are all in the red &mdash; the Dow holding up best, the Nasdaq faring worst. The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent at 6,757. If that holds by day&rsquo;s end, it&rsquo;ll be the first sub-6,800 close since Nov. 25.
Crypto appears stuck where it was 48 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin under $87,000 and Ethereum under $2,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />About Those Job Numbers&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Hustle or desperation? The number of Americans working more than one job is now its highest in records going back more than 30 years.
Digging a little deeper into the government job numbers released yesterday, we see that 9.3 million Americans reported working two or more jobs last month &mdash; 5.7% of all job-holders.
&ldquo;Only in the mid-1990s, when the workforce was considerably smaller than it is today, was the share of multiple job holders higher, peaking at 6.5% in November 1996,&rdquo; writes Felix Richter at Statista.
&ldquo;But whereas in 1996, around two-thirds of multiple jobholders were not college-educated and presumably worked in low-wage occupations, half of those working more than one job now do hold a college degree, indicating that even an advanced degree no longer guarantees a job that pays well enough to make ends meet.&rdquo;
The number of multiple job-holders in November of 2025 is substantially higher than it was in November 2019, ahead of the pandemic &mdash; as well November 2008, the nadir of the financial crisis.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7fBIw5dc6VWQkCRmLYFE2I/54065bbf89202a11fbb6a53dbc96976a/multiple_job_chart.png" alt="multiple jobs -chart" />
&nbsp;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, even by the new 2020s standard of what constitutes a healthy job market&hellip; job creation is looking punk.
Time was that it took 150,000 or even 200,000 new jobs every month for the economy to keep up with population growth.
But population growth has slowed to a crawl. The border has been effectively closed since last spring, illegal migrants already here are being deported and the native-born working-age population is stagnant.
Experts like demographer Neil Howe and Bianco Research founder Jim Bianco say the &ldquo;breakeven&rdquo; number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth is now perhaps as little as 30,000.
But poring over the numbers released yesterday&hellip; the average for the last six months is less than 17,000. Not great.
That said, the Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledges that because most of its personnel were furloughed for 43 days during the partial government shutdown, its data for October and November might be subject to &ldquo;slightly higher than usual standard errors.&rdquo;
Not that it was ever super-reliable to begin with, but that&rsquo;s a story for another day&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />TikTok: Still Not In U.S. Hands
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For the record&hellip; TikTok ownership still hasn&rsquo;t passed into American hands.
Maybe you don&rsquo;t remember now&hellip; but the social media platform used by half of the U.S. population was in danger of disappearing earlier this year.
In fact, it did disappear <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/two-executive-orders-trump-must-sign-now/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for a few hours on the eve of Donald Trump&rsquo;s inauguration</a> &mdash; thanks to a law that overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress last year and was signed by Joe Biden. Under the law, TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners had to sell its U.S. assets to U.S. buyers.
Upon taking office, Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve to find a buyer. Then came another reprieve. And another&hellip;
As you might recall, an American consortium led by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison was all set to take over. Trump himself made the announcement on September 20. The whole thing was supposed to be buttoned up when Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of October.
But it wasn&rsquo;t to be. Beijing still looks upon TikTok as valuable leverage in ongoing talks with Washington about a host of issues including trade.
The most recent deadline was Dec. 16 &mdash; yesterday. And now it&rsquo;s been pushed back to Jan. 23 of next year.
"We're just standing by and waiting to see what happens," says Frank McCourt &mdash; the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and part of the U.S. consortium.
"But if the moment arrives,&rdquo; he tells the BBC, &ldquo;we're prepared to move forward... we've raised the capital to buy it &mdash; we'll see."
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Silver Hoarding
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />On the subject of silver hoarding broached in Monday&rsquo;s edition, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;Back when the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market I understand they had purchased a lot (tonnes) of physical silver.
&ldquo;When this was discovered, who advised, or &lsquo;required&rsquo; them to get rid of their vast holdings? Do they still have possession of it?
&ldquo;If they were required to divest themselves, how was this accomplished, and wouldn't that have caused the price of silver to decrease by dumping all of that physical silver? Or did they simply offer it to their like-minded &lsquo;friends&rsquo; like JP Morgan and others who may have been happy to &lsquo;take it off their hands&rsquo; as an investment?
&ldquo;I recall buying silver dollars through the mail for $2&ndash;3 each in the early &rsquo;90s.&rdquo;
Dave responds: What wrecked the Hunt brothers&rsquo; attempt to corner the silver market in 1980 was that the rules of the game were suddenly changed. The Comex changed the margin requirements on silver futures.
That&rsquo;s the short story. Colleague Adam Sharp told the story <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/the-untold-story-behind-silvers-30x-move/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in more detail</a> over the summer at The Daily Reckoning. (Spoiler alert: It wasn&rsquo;t all about the Hunt brothers&hellip;)

fmf hero 121725

TACO or World War III

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />2026: Abundance, Crypto and Volatility Collide
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Last week in Baltimore, we put Paradigm&rsquo;s best minds in one room with a single mission: Figure out what actually matters for investors in 2026.
Not the safe consensus calls. Not the recycled talking points. The real fault lines &mdash; the ideas that make people uncomfortable before they make money.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6PIrOMPwzVRyxNTyt2wPk7/c31ec67cc95f28059cf574aca8774e29/paradigm-meeting.jpg" alt="Belvedere Meeting" />
Paradigm&rsquo;s team at the historic Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore (Dec. 11, 2025)
What followed was not a polite roundtable. It was a series of bold, sometimes unsettling forecasts that challenged almost every assumption Wall Street is leaning on today.
Here are three that stood out &mdash; and why they matter more than you might think&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Paradigm&rsquo;s science-and-technology investor Ray Blanco flipped a familiar narrative on its head. Rather than focusing on collapse or crisis, Ray outlined a year defined by abundance.
One of his boldest calls: a renewed space race in 2026, what he describes as America&rsquo;s next &ldquo;Sputnik moment.&rdquo; The driver this time isn&rsquo;t nationalism, but infrastructure &mdash; specifically data centers moving into orbit.
Projects like Nvidia&rsquo;s reported &ldquo;Starcloud&rdquo; concept are early examples of what Ray believes is coming next: orbital compute powered by continuous solar energy, reduced cooling costs and structural advantages that Earth-bound systems simply can&rsquo;t match.
If it works, the implications ripple through AI, energy and national security.
Ray&rsquo;s second prediction could be even more transformative. He&rsquo;s tracking developments that point toward a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes. &ldquo;Not treatment. Not management. A cure,&rdquo; he emphasizes.
Ray is watching companies like Vertex (VRTX) and Sana Biotechnology (SANA) closely, with a preference for Sana&rsquo;s &ldquo;superior&rdquo; approach, which aims to retrain the immune system rather than suppress it. If successful, the medical &mdash; and market &mdash; consequences would be profound.
The third pillar of Ray&rsquo;s outlook is macro&hellip; and counterintuitive. He believes the economy is drifting toward deflation through abundance, not collapse. AI and robotics increase productivity. Reshoring and tariffs eventually stabilize supply chains.
Meanwhile, demographics quietly do the heavy lifting. An aging population, low birth rates and net-negative immigration reduce long-term demand across housing, health care and consumer goods.
Ray points to the Great Deflation of 1873&ndash;1896 as historical context &mdash; a period when prices fell for decades even as innovation accelerated and living standards improved.
The takeaway: Deflation doesn&rsquo;t have to be destructive. Sometimes it&rsquo;s the price of progress.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Chris Cimorelli, AKA Mr. 10X, zoomed out &mdash; then drilled down. His starting premise was simple: &ldquo;Bitcoin is the best trade of the last century.&rdquo;
But his real focus isn&rsquo;t Bitcoin itself. It&rsquo;s Bitcoin Cash (BCH) &mdash; a 2017 blockchain fork designed to preserve Bitcoin&rsquo;s original purpose as peer-to-peer electronic cash. &ldquo;Same 21 million cap,&rdquo; Chris explains. &ldquo;Same DNA. Different execution.&rdquo;
Today, Bitcoin Cash hovers around $500 and sits just outside the crypto spotlight. Chris thinks that changes in 2026.
His thesis is that institutional investors &mdash; already stretched trying to gain meaningful crypto exposure &mdash; won&rsquo;t be able to ignore BCH much longer. Especially if Bitcoin itself continues higher.
In his framework, a move in Bitcoin toward $150,000 creates a powerful opportunity for Bitcoin Cash. At minimum, he sees the potential for BCH to triple or quadruple. In a more aggressive scenario, he sees room for significantly more upside.
His blunt forecast: &ldquo;2026: BCH 10X.&rdquo;
Whether or not that exact number materializes, Chris&rsquo; core argument is that Bitcoin&rsquo;s evolution into digital gold leaves room &mdash; and demand &mdash; for Bitcoin&rsquo;s blockchain.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For his part, Paradigm&rsquo;s chart hound Greg Guenthner asked: &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the volatility?&rdquo;
His answer: It&rsquo;s coming. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re somewhere in the middle of the AI bubble,&rdquo; Greg says. &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t mean it pops tomorrow. But it does mean the ride gets rougher.&rdquo;
After years of relatively smooth upward momentum, he sees volatility returning in force &mdash; especially in the middle of 2026. Greg is watching Q2 and Q3 closely. A brewing malaise on Main Street and midterm election seasonality all point toward &ldquo;volatility spikes.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7hEmrXU7pR5GJbJMcHU891/a8e7847f542a6b8e0b94ec107ac2bc0b/paradigm-meeting-2.jpg" alt="Gunner Presentation" />
Greg Guenthner&rsquo;s prize-winning presentation: &ldquo;Polls look bad for Team Trump &mdash; Ohio and Iowa just flipped&rdquo; 
Greg highlights, in particular, structural changes at the Federal Reserve, noting a new Fed chair plus a shifting mandate could alter how markets price risk.
His bottom line for investors: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about to get weird.&rdquo; Stocks may still trend higher overall, but Greg doesn&rsquo;t expect a straight line. Instead, he sees a target-rich environment &mdash; one where volatility creates opportunity for traders willing to stay flexible.
Bonus: Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta reinforced Greg&rsquo;s point with a history lesson. During the 1998 tech boom, he notes, the Nasdaq index suffered multiple corrections of 10% or more &mdash; driven by the Asian Financial Crisis and the LTCM collapse &mdash; even as it marched toward its eventual peak.
The lesson? Big secular bull markets don&rsquo;t move in straight lines. They shake out weak hands first. And 2026, if our Baltimore summit is correct, will have plenty of thrills and spills.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Labor Market Loses Momentum
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />November&rsquo;s jobs report points to a cooling labor market. The unemployment rate increased to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September and well above January&rsquo;s 4.0% level. It&rsquo;s the highest unemployment reading, in fact, since September 2021.
A wider gauge of joblessness, which captures discouraged workers and those forced into part-time roles, also moved higher, reaching 8.7% &mdash; a level not seen since August 2021.
The data also incorporated delayed figures from October, when total payrolls declined by 105,000 jobs after a surprise increase the prior month. Most of that drop came from the public sector, where government employment fell sharply as previously announced layoffs took effect. Government payrolls continued to edge lower in November.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics warned that fallout from the government shutdown is still affecting official numbers, raising the likelihood of uneven data in the months ahead.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />All three major U.S. stock indexes are in the red so far today. The Big Board&rsquo;s down most (-0.43%) to 48,215 while the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.30% to 6,795. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, is down slightly to 23,050.
As for commodities, crude&rsquo;s at its lowest level since 2021 &mdash; down 2.25% to $55.50 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. Similarly, precious metals have also slipped into red territory: Gold&rsquo;s price has slipped to $4,335 per ounce while silver&rsquo;s down 0.20% to $63.45.
Crypto, on the other hand, is attempting to scrape back some losses. Flagship crypto Bitcoin is up 2.25% to $87,780, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 0.65%, just under $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The First AI Model Trained in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Starcloud says it has trained an AI model in orbit for the first time &mdash; a proof-of-concept that some machine learning might eventually run off-planet.
Last month, Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud launched a satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, a chip roughly far more powerful than any compute previously sent into orbit. Once deployed, the satellite trained NanoGPT, a model created by OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy, using the complete works of Shakespeare.
The result? A model that speaks in Shakespearean English &mdash; and, more importantly, one that proves large-scale AI training can happen out of this world.
Starcloud didn&rsquo;t stop there. Its Starcloud-1 satellite is now also running Gemma, Google&rsquo;s open large language model based on Gemini, marking &ldquo;the first time in history that an LLM has been run on a high-powered Nvidia GPU in outer space,&rdquo; according to CNBC.
&ldquo;Greetings, Earthlings! Or, as I prefer to think of you &mdash; a fascinating collection of blue and green,&rdquo; the satellite wrote, reports CNBC. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see what wonders this view of your world holds.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s ambition is bigger than clever demos. Starcloud wants to show that space can support full-scale data centers as power grids, water systems and permitting processes increasingly constrain terrestrial facilities.
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston tells CNBC orbital data centers could run at a fraction of the energy cost.
&ldquo;Anything you can do in a terrestrial data center, I&rsquo;m expecting to be able to be done in space,&rdquo; Johnston says. &ldquo;And the reason we would do it is purely because of the constraints we&rsquo;re facing on energy terrestrially.&rdquo;
The International Energy Agency, for instance, projects global data-center electricity demand will more than double by 2030.
Johnston adds Starcloud-1&rsquo;s ability to run Gemma shows that complex models can operate reliably in orbit.
&ldquo;This very powerful, very parameter-dense model is living on our satellite,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We can query it, and it will respond in the same way that when you query a chat from a database on Earth, it will give you a very sophisticated response.&rdquo;
In a statement to CNBC, Tris Warkentin, product director at Google DeepMind, says &ldquo;seeing Gemma run in the harsh environment of space is a testament to the flexibility and robustness of open models.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />How SpaceX Plans to Pay for Orbit
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />While startups like Starcloud test what&rsquo;s possible, SpaceX is laying the financial groundwork to scale orbital infrastructure.
According to Reuters, SpaceX has opened a secondary share sale valuing the company at roughly $800 billion, as it prepares for a potential IPO as early as 2026. In a Dec. 12 letter to shareholders, CFO Bret Johnsen says the company is positioning itself for a public listing.
&ldquo;We are preparing the company for a possible IPO in 2026,&rdquo; says Johnsen. &ldquo;Whether it actually happens, when it happens and at what valuation are still highly uncertain, but the thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital.&rdquo;
That capital, Johnsen says, would help ramp Starship&rsquo;s flight rate and support projects including &ldquo;deploy artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in space,&rdquo; alongside moon and Mars ambitions.
But the driver behind SpaceX&rsquo;s valuation is arguably Starlink. Reuters reports SpaceX expects about $15 billion in revenue in 2025, rising to as much as $24 billion in 2026, with most of that coming from Starlink&rsquo;s satellite-internet business.
Musk reinforced that point himself, writing on X that &ldquo;valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our [market].&rdquo;
Put differently, Starlink&rsquo;s cash flow is what makes Starship &mdash; and future orbital infrastructure &mdash; economically credible. Starship may enable space-based computing. But it&rsquo;s Starlink&rsquo;s scale, revenue and global reach that justify the investment needed to get there.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Definition of &ldquo;Slop&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In November, Amazon Prime Video began testing AI-generated video recaps, billed as a slick way for viewers to catch up on major plot points without rewatching entire seasons. 
Think &ldquo;Previously on&hellip;&rdquo; but with machine efficiency and cinematic polish. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5qYVSfUqTuRXabE4Zb5ORO/6dfe496483bac1dce63dadc7216f2dbc/verge_x.png" alt="The Verge tweet" />
Welp, that didn&rsquo;t age well&hellip; 
Fans quickly noticed the AI recap for Amazon Prime&rsquo;s hit show Fallout Season One seemed only loosely inspired by the source material.
One scene featuring Walt Goggins&rsquo; character Ghoul, for instance, was labeled a &ldquo;1950s flashback,&rdquo; presumably because it looked retro. But Fallout fans know the integral difference between the show&rsquo;s midcentury aesthetic and its setting: year 2077.
For newcomers to the series, it was confusing at best and misleading at worst. Not long after fans pointed out this and other inconsistencies online, the AI recap quietly vanished.
This episode now joins a growing list of AI run amok. Apple paused an AI notification tool earlier this year after it repeatedly mangled news alerts, for example. And Google&rsquo;s AI Overviews have been mocked for confidently wrong answers.
The machines, it seems, are excellent at sounding sure. Less so at accuracy.
In related news, Merriam-Webster crowned the word &ldquo;slop&rdquo; its 2025 Word of the Year, citing its growing use to describe low-quality, mass-produced AI content.
Timely.